


Promised Land

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Babies, Bunker Sex, Eden Tree, F/M, Family Feels, Kabby Baby Fic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-11-15 09:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: it takes six years, four months and nineteen days, but Abby Griffin and Marcus Kane finally bring their whole family back together, one by one.





	1. PROLOGUE: Apocalypse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “When the angel blew his trumpet, there came hail and fire mixed with blood, which was hurled down to the earth. A third of the land was burned up, along with a third of the trees and all green grass. Anyone whose name was not written in the Book of Life was thrown outside, into the lake of fire.” 
> 
> \--Revelations 8:7; 20:14

**DAY ONE (Praimfaya)  
**

_“We don’t break.  We don’t show fear.  Death can be an act of unity too.  The people will remember.”_

* * * * *

“Forgive me,” he whispered, touching her soft brown hair one last time.  Then he inhaled deeply, clenched his fists to steel himself, and walked upstairs to die.

His people would be safe, now.  Octavia and Indra and Thelonious would lead them.  Abby would never forgive him – either for saving her against her wishes, or for choosing his own death – but that was a weight he would only have to bear for a few more hours, and then it would all be over.  The important thing was that Abby would live.

Marcus Kane had stood by and done nothing when Clarke Griffin lost her father.  He would not let her lose her mother too.

He had hoped she might be back by now, with Bellamy and Raven, so at least he could have given his goodbye to Abby by way of her daughter.  And there were so many things to say to Bellamy, too, that he’d never be able to say now - things he'd tried to say before, but he'd done it badly, it was the wrong time, Bellamy hadn't been ready to hear it.  And then he'd waited too long; there wouldn't be another chance, now.  But Clarke and Bellamy would be all right without him.  They all would.  This was the end of the line for him, they were all each walking along their own road, and his stopped here but the others would still go on.  He had taken them as far as he could; it was up to them, now.

It felt, to him, as though he had been living on borrowed time since the moment he had offered to sacrifice himself to stay behind on the Ark and send Abby and the others down to Earth without him.  He'd been given a reprieve, then.  And another when Jaha refused to kill him in Lexa's prison cell.  And another at Mount Weather.  And another when he was spared from Charles Pike's bullet.  He had been ready for this moment, over and over and over again.  In a way, he'd been expecting it.  As though Death were - if not exactly an old friend - at least an intimately familiar nemesis.  Marcus Kane had been waiting for his number to come up for a long time.  It seemed cruel and ironic that Death should wait until now, when he had Abby, when he had a family, when he had so much to live for - the choice on the Ark had not been nearly this difficult - but still, he was ready.  As long as he kept thoughts of Abby carefully locked away, he was all right.  He did not embrace Death with any great enthusiasm, but he went with his head held high.  He felt no fear.  He felt no sorrow.  He felt almost nothing at all.

. . . that is, as long as he did not let himself look at Abby.

But he shot one last parting look at the others – at Jackson, at Nathan Miller, at the guards he’d served with since the Ark, at people he’d known all his life – before turning his back to leave them behind.  He followed the long, long line of Grounders carrying unconscious bodies out into the temple, where his last act as Chancellor of the Sky People awaited him.

The gas in the canisters was potent, and though everyone responded to it differently, on average it could take several hours to wear off.  Weakened by increased radiation, most of his people would be incinerated by the death wave while still unconscious.  They would feel nothing.  They would not know. 

But some of them, he knew, might wake.  They might open their eyes to find themselves on the wrong side of the door, and realize what happened, and panic.  Someone they recognized and trusted needed to be there to ease their fear, to hold their hands, to pray with them, to listen.  Someone they trusted must be there with them when they woke up, and remain with them until the end.

And Chancellor Kane’s name was not on Clarke’s list.  Which meant his place was in the temple, with the rest of his people, to give them whatever comfort he could, for as long as they had left.

It was not what he wanted.  But it was the right thing to do.

* * *

 Indra and Thelonious escorted him as far as the steel door leading to the airlock, and said their somber goodbyes there.  Thelonious embraced him first, handing him a radio.  “We will stay with you until the end, Marcus,” he said, warmth in his low, rich voice, and they embraced with deep affection.  So much darkness in their past, all forgotten.  No point, now, in holding onto all that anger.  No point in going to his death with anything in his heart but love for all these people.  There had been a time, long before any of this happened, when Thelonious was one of his closest friends; Kane much preferred to spend his remaining hours remembering him like that.

Since, after all, this was his last day on earth.

“In peace may you leave this shore,” his friend said quietly into his ear, his arms around Kane strong and comforting.  “In love, may you find the next.”  Tears sprang to Kane’s eyes at his words, remembering all the people he had said them for, and now they were being said for him.  “Callie will be waiting for you,” Thelonious went on, eyes shining, voice kind.  “And Charles Pike.  Jacopo Sinclair.  All the people we lost in the Culling, all those we lost when the Ark came to earth.  All the people we have loved.”  He pulled back, hands on Kane’s shoulders.  “You will be with your mother again soon, Marcus.  She will see you, and know what you have become, and she will be proud.”  Then he stepped back, and let Indra take her turn to embrace him.

“You have seen much loss, Marcus of the Sky People,” she said, voice unexpectedly gentle.  “When you reach the sacred place, there will be many arrayed to greet you.  Lexa and Lincoln among them.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” Kane replied, managing a weak smile.  “'As it is above, so it is below,' my mother used to say.  Perhaps, after all we have done here on earth to unite our people into one clan, we shall now find them united after death as well."

“I believe it,” said Indra, dark eyes shining with emotion.  “You have fought well for your people.  It is time to lay down your sword, and rest.”  She rested her hand on his shoulder.  “I will watch over Octavia for you,” she promised him soberly.  “I know that she is as dear to you as she is to me.”

“She could ask for no better guidance than yours,” Kane told her sincerely.  “Thank you, friend.  For everything you have done.”  Then he pressed a kiss against her cheek - a liberty that would have earned him a sword through the chest six months ago, he reflected with some amusement - and stepped back, towards the door.

And then, because it was all over now, because this was the last hard thing so what harm could it do, he turned and gave one last look at the crowd of fallen bodies on the floor, at all that was left of the Sky People.

Abby had reached out for Jackson as she fell.  He could see them lying side by side.  She was holding his hand.

 _Go, now, before it’s too late,_ said an urgent voice in his mind, and so he turned away.  She had been frightened, she had reached out for Jackson as she fell, she had known exactly what was happening to her and when she woke she would know who had done it, and why. 

He wished they had gotten a better goodbye than this.  He hoped she would not stay angry at him forever.

He hoped, someday, she could learn to forgive him.

“I was hoping to say goodbye to Clarke and the others,” he said, swallowing hard, distracting himself, desperate to turn his mind away from thoughts of Abby grieving for him. “But in case I don’t have the chance, in case –"

He stopped short, but both Indra and Thelonious nodded heavily, understanding what he meant.

_In case I’m already dead by the time they get back._

“We’ll pass on any message you need,” said Jaha firmly.  “We promise.”

“Tell Octavia I have faith in her,” he told Indra.  “Tell her whatever doesn’t kill her makes her stronger.  She’ll know what it means.”  She nodded, eyes shining with emotion, as he turned to Jaha.  “Tell Clarke that I love her," he said softly.  "Tell her how much I wanted to be her family, how much I wish we had more time.  Tell her I forgive her, tell her she made the right list.  And tell Bellamy . . . tell him even though he wasn’t ready to hear it when I said it to him before, that I _am_ proud of him.  Of the man he’s become.  Tell him I love him, too.  And tell Abby –"

He stopped.

_Tell Abby what?_

There was so much to say that there was nothing to say.  There was no way to put it into words.  How she had changed him, what she meant to him, how he would walk into the fire a hundred times, a thousand times, and gladly, if it meant that she had the chance to live.

“Tell her she was everything to me,” he finally murmured, then took a deep breath and opened the airlock door.

“ _Yu gonplei ste odon, ai bro_ ,” came Indra’s voice from behind him, and “Goodbye, old friend,” said Thelonious, as the door closed behind him, leaving him alone in front of the stairs to the temple.

Alone, that is, except the slender figure who disentangled herself from the shadows and moved forward to block his way, arms folded, eyes blazing with fury.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” Octavia demanded, anger so palpable it radiated off her body in waves.  “Get back inside.”

“My place is with them,” he explained as gently as he could manage.  “It’s all right, Octavia.  This is where I need to be.”

“You’re the damn _Chancellor,_ Kane.  Your place is _here_.”

“The lottery didn’t work, Octavia.  The only fair way to do it was to use the system we agreed on before, back in Arkadia.  We used Clarke’s list.”

Octavia stared at him, eyes wide, shock etched all over her face.  “You’re fucking _kidding_ me,” she exclaimed.  “ _Clarke didn’t put you on the list_?”

“I told her not to,” he reassured her.  “We talked about it.  Over and over.  We had three Chancellors, and that was more than we needed.  A doctor, an engineer, and a soldier.  I was the expendable one,” he shrugged, trying to smile.  “It was the choice that made the most sense.”

“Yeah?  You think Abby would agree with that?"  She stopped suddenly.  "Kane," she said slowly, realization dawning, horror in her voice.  "Kane, _does she know_?"

"We agreed it was best if she didn't see the list," he said, the memory of those painful conversations with Clarke still fresh in his mind.  "She believes I'm listed as 'essential personnel,' and we didn't think we would ever have to use the list, so we just . . . didn't correct her.  I know," he went on firmly, raising his hand to silence the objection he could see forming on her lips, " _I know,_ Octavia.  But if you don’t think I’ve been over this from every angle –"

“Kane, when she wakes up, and you're not here –"

“Don't.”

“We _need_ you,” she said, something new in her voice, something vulnerable, reminding him suddenly that she was still just barely seventeen years old.  “I _need_ you, Kane.  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.  I was counting on having you here.  You were supposed to be here.”

He put his hands on her shoulders.  “You won the conclave,” he reminded her gently.  “You’ll have Indra, and Gaia, and Jaha, and Bellamy, and Clarke, and Abby, and dozens of others who will give you any help you need.”  He kissed her forehead.  “You can do this, Octavia,” he whispered.  “I have faith in you.”

“Kane, please don’t do this.”

He shook his head.  “It’s a bulletproof list,” he said, smiling sadly.  “I didn't want it to end like this either, Octavia, but she did a good job.  There’s no one else we can spare.  I can’t ask someone else to give up their spot for me.   _Everyone_ lost someone they loved.   _Everyone_ has someone they care about on the opposite side of this door.  Abby and I don't deserve special treatment just for that."

“Don’t do to her what he did to me,” she said in a hoarse, miserable voice, and Kane looked up sharply to see her eyes bright with tears.  “What you all did to me.”

“Octavia –"

“I woke up on the back of my _horse_ , Kane, he shot me with a damn Reaper stick to keep me from being able to stop him, and then all I could do was stand there and _watch_ , I couldn’t _do_ anything, he made his choice without me, he didn’t even let me _try_ –"

“Octavia,” he said firmly, squeezing her shoulders.  “Octavia, it isn’t the same.  We can’t stop the death wave from coming.  There’s no one to blame here.  There’s no one to be angry at.   _Pike_ pulled the trigger. _Pike_ made that choice.  This isn’t the same.”

“It’s _exactly_ the same,” Octavia insisted furiously.  “She _loves_ you, and she’s going to wake up and it’s going to be too late, and after everything she and Bellamy did to try and save us –"

“I know.”

“You were _there,_ Kane, you remember how terrified she was!  You saw her face when that door opened, she was reliving Jake, she's _done_ this before, she was willing to do anything to save your life.  And Bellamy, too, did you think about that?  About how he's going to feel when he comes back and after everything he did to get us both back inside the bunker, you're just walking back out again?”

“Then tell me what to do, Octavia!” he exploded, his veneer of control finally beginning to shatter.  He drew away from her to meet her eyes, plaintive, pleading, hands wide open in surrender.  “Give me a better plan.  Anything.  I’ll take _anything._  Does someone from another Grounder clan want to sacrifice themselves just so the chancellor of Skaikru can live?  Shall we all just _take turns breathing_ so we don’t run out of oxygen, because we went over the mandatory population limit?  Who should I kick off the Skaikru list, one of the farmers or one of the engineers?”  Octavia was silent.  "I'm sorry," he said finally, moving towards the stairs.  "But there's no other choice."  She didn't look up at him, but she didn't block his way either.  She just stood there, rooted to the spot, staring down at the cold concrete floor.  She did not cry, though her jaw clenched and unclenched as though she were fighting to hold the tears back.  “There’s three hours left before the death wave, and I have a radio,” he said gently.  She didn't look up.  “If you somehow came up with a workable solution in the next three hours, I would come back in a heartbeat.  But I promise you, I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't already considered every other option.  This time there was no other way."

Silence.

“Goodbye, Octavia,” he said finally.  “Take care of our people.”  Then he made his way up the stairs, pushed open the door into the temple, and heard it slam closed behind him.

 _Goodbye, Abby,_ he said to himself, and sat down amidst the sea of motionless bodies to wait.

* * * * *

The other clans awaited the death wave inside their embassies, performing their last rites among the symbols of their people.  But the Skaikru embassy was too far from the bunker, and the atmospheric radiation made it too dangerous to brave the elements for long; instead, Octavia’s guards had deposited all the unconscious bodies in the temple of the first commander.  Which was fitting, in its own way.  At least, Kane thought, running his hand over the Polaris shuttle, they would die among things that had come from space.  Things that felt, maybe at least a little, like home.

He was not alone for long; a shape moving in the far recesses of the room caught his eye, and revealed himself to be David Miller.

“Nate?” he said immediately, face drawn with concern, scanning the room for his son's body.

Kane shook his head.  “Inside,” he reassured him, watching the man’s shoulders slump in relief.  “Safe.  I promise.”

“Jackson with him?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Good,” said David, rising heavily to his feet and stepping with care over the unconscious bodies to make his way over to where Kane sat.  “I like that kid.  He’ll be good for Nate.  He’s steady, I like that in a person.  Abby seems crazy about him.  And she’s a good judge of character.”  He raised his eyebrow at Kane.  “Present company excepted.”

Kane hadn’t expected to laugh today, but there it was.  

David Miller dropped a hand on Kane's shoulder as he eased himself down onto the cold floor beside him and pulled a flask out of his pocket.  “No point in being grim about it,” he remarked, looking around the room at the bodies and shaking his head.  “Gas canisters, that was smart,” he added, taking a long swig and passing Kane the flask.  “Grounders would have taken out the whole lot of us if they’d opened the door and seen fighting.  Sorry you lost the lottery, though.”

There seemed no point in explaining about the list, so Kane merely shrugged and let this pass, and took the moonshine David offered him.  They sat there in amicable silence for a long time, passing the flask back and forth.

“This is how it’s supposed to be,” David finally said, certainty in his voice.  “Parents are supposed to go first.  We don’t have to like it, but that’s the way the world works.  Our kids are safe, that’s what matters.  This is what fathers do.”

“I don’t remember my father,” Kane said, rather unexpectedly.  It seemed an odd time for personal revelations, but perhaps the end of your life is as good a time as any to reflect on the beginning of it.  “I was only two when he died.”

“What happened to him?”

“Floated for getting in a fight over moonshine rations.  He was a drunk.”

David took this in with a nod, neither judging nor offering insincere sympathy, just absorbing it as a new piece of information about the man sitting next to him.  “I had both of mine until I was ten, and then there was a chemical explosion in Factory Station while they were on shift together.  So the way I look at it,” he added, with something almost like cheerfulness as he took another swig of moonshine, “I already gave my own son better than my parents could give me.  Nate had me almost twice as long.  And maybe, whatever happens after this, whatever world they build in five years when that door opens again, he’ll get to have his own kids for a good long life.  Grandkids, even, imagine that.”  He looked over at Kane.  “This is how it’s supposed to be,” he told him again, his hand on Kane's shoulder, warm, reassuring.  “You were a father to a lot of kids who needed a father, and you gave them as much time as you had left.  That’s not nothing.  That’s a lot.  You made a good man out of Bellamy Blake, Marcus.  He won’t forget you after you’re gone.  None of them will.”

“Thank you,” said Kane in a low voice, and meant it.

They were silent for a long time.

“I don’t know what to say about Abby,” David finally murmured, shaking his head.  “I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Kane said flatly, and took another long drink of moonshine to try and keep himself from thinking.  He was spared the need to say anything further when the sound of a body stirring, and a quiet whimpering rising into a howl, came from the hallway.

David rose to his feet.  “Someone else is waking up.  I’ll go bring them in.”  He looked down at Marcus with half a smile.  “Good thing Vera Kane’s son is here,” he said dryly.  “You remember all the words?”

Marcus nodded.  “I remember all the words."

“Good,” said David, making his way back through the crowd of bodies.  “I’m sorry you’re not inside the bunker, Marcus,” he added sincerely, looking back as he passed through the doorway, “but I’m sure glad you’re here.”

Then the shadows swallowed him up, and he was gone.

* * * * *

The first hour was chaos.

Of the three hundred or so Sky People carried up to the temple to wait for the death wave, at least twenty-five, besides David Miller, had awoken as the effects of the gas wore off, which was enough to create the very real risk of a stampede and a mass panic.  It took all Kane had left in him to stand between the crowd and the door, voice calming but strong, and make himself heard.

“I know you are angry,” he said to them, holding out his hands.  “Angry at the people still inside.  Angry at forces we cannot control.  Angry at the Grounders.  Angry at me.  And I know that anger is rooted in fear.  None of us wished for this.  None of us desired this fate.  Many choices we might once have made have been taken from us, and you may call that injustice, and I won't argue with you about that.  But be that as it may, the choice we have now – the only choice left to us – is this: what will we do with the last that remains of our time?”

“You’re saying we should just roll over and give up?” he heard someone shout, as a figure elbowed its way through the small crowd of muttering, furious people and revealed itself to be a girl in a blue dress with a tightly-drawn, angry face.  “Why don’t we fucking _fight_?  Why aren’t we gathering every weapon we can find, to break down that door?”

Kane could not remember the girl’s name, but he knew who she was; only a few young women of childbearing years had been left off Clarke’s list, and this girl, whose face bore the telltale scars of a wasting childhood illness, had been omitted based on her medical records.  The chances of successfully conceiving were less than ten percent, and she had been condemned to die based on that.  Her anger was nothing if not just.  He felt nothing but compassion for her.

“You cannot fight radiation with weapons,” he said simply.  “There is no one left to fight.  It would bring you nothing.  It would accomplish nothing.”

“It sure as hell will,” she retorted.  “I don’t want to have to kill Grounders, but I will if I have to.  When they open that door to let you back inside, we’ll be ready for them.”

“I’m not going back inside,” he said, and the whole crowd stared.  So did she.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not going back inside,” he repeated.  “I’m here with you until the end.  I’m staying.”

“But you’ll die.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the _Chancellor_.”

“By tomorrow, someone else will be.”

The girl stared at him, astonished, some of her fury beginning to fade into confusion.  “You could have forced them to make a place for you,” she demanded.  “Why didn’t you?”

“Because it was a good list," he said, shrugging.  "Doing the right thing is often unpopular and usually difficult, but Clarke Griffin did the right thing.  She made a list based on painful, complicated calculations about our survival.  Who would be most likely to bear children?  Who would have the skills needed to maintain and repair the machinery we would need to survive?  Abby Griffin is a doctor and Thelonious Jaha is an engineer, and the Grounders elected Octavia Blake to lead the clans.  I'm not needed." 

The girl was watching him with suspicion, like this was a trick, like the idea of embracing such a fate with patient resignation was alien to her.  He took a risk, then, and sat back down on the ground, motioning her to join him.  After a moment, she did . . . and the others, one by one, did too.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Vera,” she told him, and smiled a little at his expression of shock.  "My parents went to your mom's church," she explained.  "They thought my mother couldn't have a child.  Your mom prayed with them nearly every day.  When I was born, they told her she'd made a miracle happen." 

"We'll all be with her soon," he said softly, and felt something inside his chest loosen.  It was the first thought that had brought him real comfort since he'd made his decision an hour ago. 

The girl looked up at him.  "Aren't you _scared_?" she demanded suddenly.  "Why aren't you more scared?"

"I am scared," he told her frankly.  "And I'm angry.  And sad.  And I'm thinking about the people I love who are on the other side of that door, who I'll never see again.  None of us wants to be here.  None of us chose this ending.  But the fact that we're out there means other people will get to live.  It means that the human race will survive.  Did my mother ever tell you about Moses?"  The girl nodded.  "I grew up on those stories," Kane told her, feeling the crowd draw closer, listening, feeling the heated anger drain out of the room, feeling something like peace begin to slowly, slowly chip its way through.

David Miller's eyes met his from across the room, and he gave an approving nod.  Keep going, David mouthed to him, and Kane looked around and realized that the whole crowd of furious people had sat down on the floor.  Some were embracing, some holding hands, but most were watching Kane, listening with keen attention to hear what he said to the girl named Vera.

"Moses led his people towards a Promised Land he didn't live to see himself," he told her.  "That was the deal.  That was the contract he made with God.  He led them out of the place where they were imprisoned, towards hope and freedom, and he took them as far as he could, and then they went on without him the rest of the way.  We are Moses, now.  That's all of us.  None of us wished to die, none of us wished to be here, but our presence here in this temple means that others will get to live.  It means our people will survive.  It means that in five years, this door will open again and the people we love will come back outside and they will remake the world."  He reached out and took the girl's hand.  "We all die, eventually," he reminded her gently.  "At least all of us know that our death has meaning.  That it has a purpose.  It isn't what we chose, and it isn't what we wanted, but it's not nothing.  They will remember us," he tells her, lifting his head, raising his voice a little, feeling the others sit up and listen, knowing he is speaking to us all.  "They will remember all of our names.  They will know that others died so that they could live.  Children will be born, because we died here today.  They will come back up out of the dark, five years from now, and they will build homes and plant green things and build a home that will last.  All the wars are over.  All the storms will be over.  This is the Promised Land, Vera," he says, squeezing her hand.  "What they make in five years will be the home that lasts.  This time, it's real.  And you're a part of that.  All of us are a part of that.  All of us are building the Promised Land with them."

He heard the radio crackle, and felt a pang in his heart.  Thelonious was there, on the other end of the line.  Thelonious was listening. 

He felt the girl named Vera begin to grow calmer, felt her panic and fury subside, as she squeezed his hand back, and something like peace began to flow over him.  It wouldn't be long now.  Two hours, at most.  He was already beginning to feel a little warm, a little faint, like he'd been out in the hot sun too long - the very gentle early signs of radiation sickness beginning to show.  Mild, yet, not even unpleasant.  It would be peaceful, when it came.  He was ready.

They were ready.

 _I'm coming, Mother,_ he thought to himself, and closed his eyes.

* * * * *

Dying, Kane thought sleepily, was not really so bad. 

He could feel David Miller’s hand gripping his left, and the girl named Vera on his right.  There were now only about a dozen people left conscious – the heat had weakened several more, who the others had gently laid down to rest – and all those remaining had formed a circle around the metal bunker door, holding each other’s hands to send their prayers down to their loved ones in the bunker below.

Thoughts of Abby were still too painful, so as they went around the circle and spoke the names of their families and friends, Kane had chosen to send his prayers to Octavia.  It was after the prayer circle that he had begun to feel drowsy – fatigue was one of the earliest signs of radiation sickness, he remembered, which meant if he was lucky, all of this would be over before the death wave came. 

He felt his head loll forward, drowsy from the heat as radiation seeped into his bones and Vera’s hand tightened in his, and he thought about Octavia.  He remembered watching her fight in the rain, bruised and bloody and caked with mud, but still unrelenting, desperate to prove to Indra – and maybe to herself – that she was stronger than anyone believed.  He remembered all the times she spoke Trigedasleng with him, and the time she and Lincoln had tried to teach him to ride Helios.  He remembered the first time he watched her duck inside the wall to slip outside the gates of Arkadia, and how he worried every single minute of the day until she was safely back inside again.  He remembered how she had moved heaven and earth to save him and Lincoln and Sinclair, and he remembered the devastating way her face crumpled as he held her in the rain and they watched Charles Pike raise his gun to Lincoln’s head.  He remembered the way it felt like a knife through his heart when Echo told them she was dead, and the sheer exultation of relief when he realized she was alive.  He remembered the fierce ache of endless worry he felt during the conclave and the swell of pride and affection and relief in his chest when he watched her walk into the throne room and knew she had won.

He had no more than an hour left to live – maybe less, if the radiation took him first – so everything he had left, he sent to Octavia.  He had not thought, on the Ark, that he would ever be a man who wanted children, or was suited to be anyone’s father.  He had lived nearly all his adult life believing that.  And then he had met Bellamy and Octavia Blake, and at first they had found one another mutually infuriating, and even a truce had seemed impossible.  And yet somewhere along the way – he had no idea how or why or when – they had become, in some unaccountable way, _his._

He would never be a father, not truly.  Not the way Thelonious was, or the way Jake had been.  But maybe this was a little window into what it felt like, to leave the younger generation behind you and hope that all the things you tried to say had reached them.  Maybe once he was gone, Octavia would remember the person he had believed she could become, and it would be as though she carried a piece of him with her still.

He liked the thought of that.  That was something he could hold onto.

 _Goodbye, Octavia,_ he said silently, as his eyes sank heavily closed, and then heard her voice calling his name.

In the hot, sweltering silence, as he began to slowly drift away, he wondered if her voice was coming from his mind, if perhaps he had prayed for her so long and so intently that he had begun to hallucinate her presence.  Maybe this was the beginning of the end.  Maybe this was how dying felt.  Maybe Octavia was the figure his half-conscious brain had concocted to take him by the hand and guide him from this life into the next.

“Kane! Kane, come in! For fuck’s sake, Kane, pick up the goddamn radio!”

He opened his eyes.

David Miller, leaning heavily against a pillar but slightly more conscious than Kane was, nodded towards the radio sitting next to the bunker door.  “It’s for you,” he said dryly.

“Kane, please tell me you’re still alive up there.  Pick up.  For the love of God, _pick up_.”

He picked the radio up.  “I’m here, Octavia,” he said, a little blearily, forcing the words to form in his mouth.  “What’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Is everyone okay?”  _Is Abby okay?,_ he meant but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“Kane!”  He heard a scuffle and voices in the background – Octavia was with Indra and Thelonious and . . . was that _Jackson?_   What was he doing in the office, with a hundred patients recovering from the gas canisters?

“Octavia?”

“Kane, I’m opening the door.  You’re coming back inside.”

He sighed.  “There’s an hour left, Octavia,” he said wearily, rubbing his temples.  “I don’t want to spend it arguing with you.”

“You promised me you would come back if I found a way.  I found a way.”

“Octavia –“

“No, Kane!”  Her voice was ferocious.  “You _promised._   You said if I came up with a workable solution in the next three hours, you would come back inside.  And I have one.  Stand back, we’re unlocking the door.”

 “Octavia, I told you – “

“They’re going to space,” she interrupted him.  Kane’s head snapped up, astonished, and met David Miller’s eyes.  The others were rousing now, and beginning to move closer to listen.  

“They’re what?  Who is?  Octavia, what are you –“

“There isn’t time to explain,” she said impatiently.  “Bellamy, Murphy and Emori left with Clarke to go fetch Raven.  They picked up Harper and Monty on the way.  And Echo, apparently.  They got delayed on the way and there wasn’t time to make it back here before the death wave hit, so they’re taking Becca’s rocket to the Ark.”

“To the _Ark?”_ he exclaimed.  “My God, that’s _insane._  Whose lunatic idea was that?”

“Whose do you think?” he heard Jackson mutter in the background, but Octavia pressed on.

“Kane, _listen_ to me,” she said urgently.  “Clarke and Bellamy and Raven _were all on the list._   We only have ninety-seven people to fill a hundred slots.  We have three people’s worth of oxygen left.”

Kane set down the radio and looked around the room.  There were eleven people left conscious, including himself and David Miller and Vera, and all of them were now listening intently, too afraid to commit to hope with the end so close, but beginning at least to consider it.  Oh, this was cruel.  Eleven people for three slots.  No, he was done making lists.  She could not ask him to decide this.

“Octavia,” he said gently, “there are more than ten of us still conscious up here, and all of them can hear you.  I can’t make that choice again.  I can’t decide who will live and who will die.  I already did that once today, and I won’t do it again.”

“I already chose,” she said decisively, “and it’s you.  _Just_ you.”

“No.”

“The other two spots are spoken for,” she said, something strange in her voice. 

Kane shook his head.  “There are good people up here,” he said, looking at David Miller, looking at Vera, “they should get to live, there are people younger than I am, more useful than I am, there are hundreds of people still up here that you’ll need more than you would ever need me.”

“No.  It has to be you.”

“Octavia – “

“I can’t – it’s not my thing to tell you, I wasn’t supposed to – She should get to tell you herself, it shouldn’t be like this, over the radio, with everyone listening – “

He heard a scuffle in the background, like a muffled argument, and the sound of someone else grabbing the radio out of Octavia’s hands.  “We don’t have time for this,” Jackson snapped.  “Abby’s _pregnant,_ Kane.  It wasn’t brain damage from ALIE’s chip.  Her brain is fine.  It’s going to be hard enough when she wakes up to break the news to her that Clarke is going to space; if you make me tell her she’s eight weeks pregnant and the father of her children didn’t come back inside even after we told him he could – “

“Children?” repeated David Miller, who was far more articulate at the moment than Kane was.  He sat staring, openmouthed, at the radio, unable to process the magnitude of the thing Jackson and Octavia were trying to tell him.

“Twins,” said Jackson.  Then, hesitantly, “Nate said to tell you that he loves you.”

“Keep him out of trouble,” said David, and Jackson gave a sad laugh.

“Not sure that’s possible,” he told him, “but I’ll try.”

“Kane, please,” Octavia’s voice came back through the speaker.  “We voted, and we all agreed.  We have three spots left, and they’re for you and your children.  To keep your family together.  Kane, you’re going to be a father.”  Silence.  He was still too stunned to move or speak.  “I promised Clarke,” she added desperately. “She knows about Abby.  She made me swear that I would make sure her spot in the bunker went to you.  Please, Kane.  You have to come back inside.”

Kane couldn’t move.  His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

_Abby’s pregnant, Kane._

_Twins._

_Kane, you’re going to be a father._

But how could he leave these people, after he’d promised to stay with them until the very end?  How could he take the only life raft, and leave them behind without looking back?  How could he save himself if there wasn’t a way to save the rest of them, too?

 “Open the door,” said David Miller, taking the radio gently out of Kane’s hands.  “He’s coming back inside.”  Kane stared at him.  “I see what you’re thinking,” David said firmly, “and the answer is no.  No, wanting to live doesn’t make you selfish.  It makes you human.  And in this case, it makes you a dad.”

“David – “

“No, Kane, you’re not abandoning us.  No, we aren’t going to rise up in revolt and smash down the door if they open it up to let you in.”  Kane was silent.  “Your kids need you,” David told him.  “ _All_ our kids need you.”

A dull metallic scrape sounded beneath their feet, the round door etched with the Second Dawn logo now unlocked.   But still, Kane didn’t move.  “I only have three minutes before I have to seal the door again,” came Octavia’s voice from the radio.  “Hurry.  Say your goodbyes and come back into the airlock.  After this, the door seals for good.”

The girl named Vera reached out unexpectedly, and took Kane’s hand in hers.  “Maybe you got your mother’s stories wrong,” she said, with something like a ghost of a smile on her lovely scarred face.  “Maybe you’re not Moses, Chancellor.  You’re Joshua.  You’re the one who carries on, after all those years in the desert and the wilderness, all those years thinking they’d never reach their home.  Joshua was the one who never lost faith.  Who led their people to the Promised Land he had never seen, but believed in anyway.”  She squeezed his hand.  “That’s you,” she told him.  “And if you’re Joshua, you still have work to do.  Your story doesn’t end here.  Go back inside.” 

“Your first act of fatherhood,” Miller agreed, kneeling down to lift open the hatch.  “You’re going to go down those steps, and you’re going to close this door behind you, and you’re going to _live_.”

“We’ll take care of each other,” said Vera, looking around at the others, who nodded.  “It won’t be long now.”

“You came with them to give them comfort,” said David Miller, dropping a warm, comforting hand on Kane’s shoulder.  “You did that.  You haven’t broken a promise, Marcus.  But Abby and your children need you more.”

_Abby’s pregnant, Kane._

_Twins._

_Kane, you’re going to be a father._

“You’re out of time,” David said, voice urgent, brooking no dispute.  “Go, Kane.  It’s okay.”

Most of the others were too weak by now to rise from their places on the floor, but those who were able rose to their feet and reached out to Kane as he passed them, squeezing his hand as he made his way to the opening of the bunker.  Miller was the last.  “Tell my son I love him,” he said, embracing him.  “Now go be with your family.”

Kane gave one last look around the room, saying a final silent goodbye to the rest of the Sky People, then stepped inside and descended the staircase.  The last thing he saw, as he looked up behind him, was the girl named Vera smiling down at him, peace and benediction in her bright green eyes.

Then the door closed, and they were gone.

* * * * *

 Octavia greeted him at the door with a syringe, which she jammed unceremoniously into his arm before he even had a moment to protest.  “That’s from Jackson,” she said.  “For the radiation.  He said as long as you were still conscious and had no visible burns on your skin, the dosage is strong enough to clear it up completely.”  Kane hardly heard her.  “Kane,” she said, shaking his shoulder.  “Kane.  Snap out of it.  You’re alive.  You’re going to be fine.”

But everything was still blurry and there were too many things to think and feel and he still didn’t know how to turn thoughts into words again, and the reality of the situation had not yet fully sunk in yet.  He had spent hours and hours convincing his mind to prepare for the inevitability of death, and the reprieve had come so quickly it didn’t feel real to him yet.  

Octavia, sensing that he wasn’t entirely there with her yet, put her hand on his arm.  “I have to seal the airlock,” she told him.  “Abby’s down in Med Bay.  She’s all right, just unconscious.  Jackson hasn’t been able to revive her yet.  We have seven minutes until the death wave hits.  You should go be with her.”  Then she opened the bunker door and followed him out as the airlock sealed shut behind them for the very last time.

The next time that door opened, the whole world would be different.

The next time he saw the girl named Vera, there would be nothing left of her but the ash of white bones.

None of it felt real.

He walked on, numb and hazy, anti-radiation meds slowly taking effect and beginning to push away the fog.  Abby inside him, in his bloodstream, forcing him back to life.  He went down and down and down, deaf to the clamor of voices around him, bubbling forth out of every room as the residents of the bunker watched Marcus Kane come back from death.  He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing.  He just followed the inexorable pull of the thing stronger than gravity which had wrapped around his heart and was tugging him downwards, toward the long cold hallway outside Med Bay, where most impossible thing in the world lay waiting for him, unconscious in a hospital bed.

It was moderately-controlled chaos inside.  Jackson had returned to his post already, with Niylah and a few others who must have been clan healers scrambling to tend to the myriad cuts, scrapes and bruises that the brief, aborted Skaikru uprising had caused, and the handful of concussions caused by anyone who hit the ground too hard after the gas canisters dropped.  Many of them looked up, startled, as Kane entered, but no one spoke.  The feelings in the room were ambivalent, which was fair.  They were grateful to be alive, but they all had someone they loved on the wrong side of that door.  Not all of them believed that saving the Grounders was worth losing the rest of their own people, and not all of them, given the choice, would have assigned Skaikru’s three remaining places to Marcus Kane.  

Peace would take time.

But that was a problem for tomorrow.  The only thing that mattered to him now was the hospital bed in the far corner of Med Bay, tucked away from the chaos and the noise, where Nathan Miller sat beside a still shape draped in a thick wool blanket, watching the screen of a heart monitor.  

He rose to his feet as Kane approached.  “He wrote my name on his own paper, didn’t he?” Miller said without preamble, and reached up with his sleeves to scrub the tears from his eyes as Kane nodded.  “I knew it.  I fucking _knew_ he would.  I told him not to.”  

Kane wanted to tell Nathan Miller his father was a hero.  He wanted to tell him about the people upstairs and the girl in the blue dress and how they had sat hand in hand around the circular door to pray over the people they loved and how David’s voice had ached with raw, desperate love as he spoke his son’s name.  And someday he would.  But he couldn’t do it right now.  So instead he just wrapped his arms around the boy’s back in a firm embrace, and pretended not to see as Miller dashed away the tears from his eyes the moment he thought Kane wasn’t looking.

“I’m just with her while Jackson finishes up setting the broken bones,” he explained, suddenly grateful for a distraction, a change of subject, and stepped back to let Kane in closer to the bed.  “He comes back over to check in every few minutes, don’t worry.  She’s fine, she’s stable - and babies are fine too - but he wanted someone at the monitor the whole time just in case.  There are only a handful of people who haven’t woken up yet, and he was worried.”  He pulled up a metal chair from the corner and motioned Kane towards it.  “I’m gonna go see if I can help,” he said, nodding to where Niylah was examining someone for a concussion.  “We’ll be nearby if you need anything, or if she wakes up.  Just call.” 

Kane nodded wordlessly, not looking up from Abby’s still, sleeping face, and felt Miller’s hand on his shoulder as the boy walked away.

He reached out his finger to brush against the glass of the monitor.  Three jagged yellow lines on a green background.   Three heartbeats, chiming in unison.  Clarke and Raven and Bellamy were on a rocket bound for space, and he was here, _alive,_ and two new hearts were beating inside Abby’s body, and there was only one minute and forty seconds left until the end of the world.

 _“Then Moses summoned Joshua,”_ he heard Vera Kane’s gentle voice whisper in his mind, _“and said to him in the sight of all the people, ‘Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has promised to their ancestors, and it shall belong to you. You will neither be abandoned nor forsaken, for the Lord goes with you.  Do not let your heart be troubled, nor give into fear.”_

His mother had always wanted a grandchild.  And she’d always liked Abby.

The lights flickered once, twice, and a faint, faraway rumbling began in the difference, like the sound of stone collapsing.  _Jericho,_ he thought distantly.  Maybe the girl named Vera had been right, maybe he was in the right story after all.  This part he remembered: Joshua watching the walls of the great city come crashing down around him.

On the other side of the bunker door, where Kane no longer was, a wall of fire swept through Polis, taking the buildings with it; somewhere far, far above, he could hear the clamor and rumble of towers falling down around them.

Twelve stories below the surface of the earth, he reached out and took Abby’s hand.

 


	2. Genesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The Lord said to Jacob . . . Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and through them you will spread to the west and the east, to the north and the south. In you and your descendants all the families of the earth will find blessing. I am with you and will protect you wherever you go, and bring you back to this land.”  
> \-- Genesis 28:13-15

**DAY THREE  
**

_"After everything we've done, do we even deserve to survive?"  
_

* * * * *

Things began badly.

The fact that Marcus had to tell her - the fact that she was so far gone, so single-mindedly fixated on the goal of survival, cracking the code to Nightblood, saving the people she loved, that she had lost herself entirely - the fact that she, a mother and a doctor, had been entirely blind to the thing happening inside her own body until she had it explained to her by somebody else - hit her with staggering force, followed by a cascade of emotional aftershocks so complicated that she could not possibly, from there in that hospital bed, begin to properly untangle them.

But Abby could hardly be faulted for that.  She had lived her entire life in a world where this kind of thing didn't exist.  Clarke had been a _choice_ , Clarke was _planned_ , the result of a series of visits to Med Bay where doctor after doctor put both Griffins through a rigorous physical to determine whether Abby would be permitted to remove her contraceptive chip.  Scarce resources made for cruel medical practices; many a woman who had longed all her life to be a mother was declined for failing to pass the scrupulous examination because her hypothetical child might have a risk factor for some disease that measured .05% higher than the Ark permitted.  Jake and Abby endured needles and x-rays and ultrasounds and a psych eval, their entire families’ medical histories laid bare, all for the sake of being permitted to attempt the process of conceiving.  Once determined that Jake could sire, and Abby could carry to term, a healthy and strong infant with no predisposition to genetic weaknesses, permission was finally granted and the chip removed - soon to be replaced by a new one, implanted the very day Clarke was born, to ensure that she would not conceive again.  Abby held her newborn daughter, body aching, ripped in half by this tidal wave of love that rushed through her at shocking velocity, staring down at the tiny pink-and-gold bundle in her arms, barely even registering the presence of the medical assistant jabbing a subdermal injection into her shoulder.  She had her baby, at long last; and since having another was legally prohibited, truthfully, she'd never really given it a second thought.

On Earth, it had come up, obviously; but for other women, not for her. They’d removed several dozen contraceptive chips in Arkadia, back when they’d thought the home they’d built would be the home that would actually last.  Back when they thought they’d finally found peace.  They planted carrots, they hung paintings, they built fences.  They began to make a world fit to bring children into, and Abby was glad of it, but the thought of loving anyone else after Jake never entered her mind, so she simply didn’t factor herself into the equation. 

And of course, by the time she realized the way she felt for Marcus, they were in the middle of a war.  The world they might have made for their people to bring children into was gone, then, and it didn’t come back. 

And so the first time she came to his bed, the thought never crossed her mind.  Nor the second, or the third, or the fourth, and so on, for all the nights they spent in Polis before they were separated.  She didn’t stop to consider whether the EMP Clarke had used to free her from the City of Light might have short-circuited the chip in her shoulder, and she didn't experience any symptoms that definitively pointed to pregnancy.  She was tired all the time, of course, but so was everyone.  And since she’d never had morning sickness with Clarke, and didn’t have it this time either, there was no telltale nausea to ring the alarm bells.  Even her waistline was no help; she’d been working herself to such a fever pitch of manic energy on the island that she’d _lost_ weight, up all night trying to find a way to crack the Nightblood solution without sending a hundred-year-old rocket back to space.

The only sign that anything was wrong was the dreams.  But the dreams, to her, meant something else.  The dreams meant, not burgeoning new life, but impending death.

The dreams meant that without a cure, both she and Raven were going to die.

Sheer stubbornness prevented her from allowing Jackson to examine her, and she hid her symptoms better than Raven could, since she never had a seizure.  There did not, in fact, appear on the outside to be anything wrong with her, other than being just as overworked and underslept as everyone else.  Perhaps if she’d told Jackson about the dreams earlier . . . perhaps if he’d been less anxious not to distress her after that terrible day at the lab and so ceased to push her to let him do a brain scan . . . perhaps if she’d ever allowed herself a moment to stop and rest and breathe and listen to what her body was desperately trying to tell her . . . everything might have been different.

Instead, for two days she accidentally broke Marcus Kane's heart.

* * *

She woke up in Med Bay, Miller and Jackson standing on one side of her, Marcus leaping to his feet from the other side at the first sign of movement from the bed.  Before any of the other vitally important things they all had to tell her could be told, she first had to reckon with the fact that Praimfaya had come and gone, and she was still inside, alive . . . which meant that, despite her explicit wishes, Marcus kept her name on the list, and someone else who might have survived had gone outside to die instead.  She was furious at him, more furious than he’d ever seen her.  Praimfaya would have been swift and clean, over in a heartbeat, and she knew the moment Clarke put on that radiation suit that this was goodbye forever.  Better that she give someone else the chance to live, instead of being slowly and painfully killed by the spreading fever in her brain.  The thought of forcing Clarke and Marcus to _watch_ that, to tend to her like a child, to panic once the seizures finally came for her (a fate she dreaded every day), the picture of her own body slowly shutting down as her mind lost the capacity to control it, all the while knowing she was taking up oxygen and food rations that could have gone to a farmer, an engineer, a mechanic . . . No.  It would have been unendurable.

She’d only had one choice left to her, and she’d made her peace with it: to die quickly and cleanly without forcing Marcus to watch. 

So her first reaction, upon opening her eyes and realizing that choice had been taken away, was fury.

She raged at him with such ferocity that Jackson had to restrain her, but Marcus didn’t have any fight left.  He’d been sleeping in that metal chair, she learned later, for three days; he hadn’t left her side since Praimfaya.  He looked ten years older than the last time she'd seen him, the face she loved so much now drawn with worry and grief, and because she knew in her bones how much more of it was coming - because she was expecting the seizures to begin any moment, because now she was trapped here with him and he was going to have to watch her die - all she could do was storm at him for refusing to heed the thing she had told him to do.

Marcus absorbed every blow without arguing.  He said very little, shoulders sagging heavily in his chair as though burdened with an impossible weight.  Only when Abby finally demanded to be allowed to see her daughter did he and Jackson finally begin to give her the rest of the story.  There was no Raven, waiting in the wings with a miraculous cure; and, more painfully even than that, there was no Clarke.  Jackson explained what he'd learned from Octavia: that the kids were gone, that the bunker had lost contact with the island before the death wave hit, but that there was every hope that all of them had made it up there safely.

"The Ark?" she whispered, staring at Jackson blankly.  "They went back to the Ark?"

"It was the only solution," he explained.  "I was there when Bellamy was on the radio with Octavia and Jaha.  They knew they wouldn't make it back to the bunker in time.  Raven seemed confident she could get the rocket back to the Go-Sci ring.  And they'd thought of everything else already - food, supplies, fuel.  It was a smart plan," he reassured her.  "They're going to be fine.  I promise.  She's going to be fine."

"Five years," Abby said dully, and none of them could answer that.  The dawning realization of what this meant, of how wide the separation between herself and her daughter had grown while she lay unconscious on this bed, turned her fiery anger into something cold and heavy and silent.  She shrank back into herself, all the fury abruptly drained out of her, and for a long time she said nothing at all.  Dimly, she was aware of Miller and Jackson looking at each other, as if silently debating whether to stay or go, as though they had more to say but weren't quite sure how to get there.  And so it wasn't until she looked up at them suddenly, brow furrowed, puzzling through the logistics of everything that had happened, and asked what seemed to her to be an entirely straightforward question - "If Clarke isn't coming back, who took her place on the list?" - that the rest of the story came out.

It was Miller, finally, who stepped in - out of both a kind of protectiveness over Marcus, and perhaps a desire to be the one who gave her his own father's part of the story - to tell Abby everything that had happened on the other side of the bunker door.  Jackson chimed in with his own role in the narrative. 

Marcus alone was silent.

“I don’t understand,” she finally said, looking up at Miller, brow furrowed in confusion.  “Why did Octavia give three places to Marcus when he only needed one?”

Miller opened his mouth to answer, but Jackson shook his head almost imperceptibly, resting a hand on the other man's arm, and exchanged a brief, meaningful glance with Marcus, who nodded.  There was something hovering in the air, something they weren't telling her, all three were speaking over her head in silent code, and if it had gone on a moment longer she would have snapped completely; but instead, Jackson and Miller, as if by some invisible signal, discreetly moved away and left her unexpectedly and suddenly alone with Marcus Kane.

Her anger had receded, leaving nothing but emptiness in its wake, but she still was not sure she could forgive him, and so could think of nothing to say.  It was supposed to be over, this was all supposed to be _over_ already, every moment she spent in his presence just made it harder to stomach the inevitability of the fact that Raven was not coming home to cure her and now he would have to watch her die.

"Abby," he said gently, his voice warm and low, but with something in it that drew her gaze finally back up to meet his.  Something strange, some new emotion, something she could not entirely understand except that it contained something urgent.  He moved his chair closer and reached out to take her hand. 

She looked at him for a long moment, feeling the warmth of his skin on his, and for a heartbeat she let herself be soothed.  She had always cherished this, the way her hand felt in his.  It had done something to her even before she knew she loved him.  There had always been an almost electrical energy about it, flowing between them - sometimes from her, when it was Marcus that needed it, and sometimes - like now - from Marcus into her.

Then she thought about Marcus having to hold her hand while she walked up stairs, holding a spoon for her while she ate, brushing her hair, bathing her, doing all the things she could no longer do once her body shut down, and she wondered if the misery of the spreading brain sickness, the indignity of having to be tended to every day, of losing her own strength bit by bit, would one day make his touch unbearable to her, and she felt a knot of grief choke her throat, as though she had lost him already.

Then she followed his gaze to the green screen with three yellow lines on it, and suddenly time stopped.

Two empty places in the bunker, given to Marcus by Octavia to make him come back inside.

Two heartbeats on the monitor, chiming in unison with Abby's.

Two lives that would have been snuffed out like a pair of candles before Abby had even realized they existed, if Marcus had let her have her way and she'd been on the other side of the door.  The one thing he'd always wanted and thought he could never have, and it was his, but if she'd died out there he never would have known it.

Abby burst into tears. 

Once the floodgates had swung open, she could not make it stop, and the tears flowed out of her as though of their own volition.  She buried her face in the pillow, shoulders shaking with raw, jagged sobs.  Marcus watched her for a long time, his whole body seeming to collapse in on itself, grief etched in every line of his weary face, as though she'd given him the answer to a question he had been dreading and expecting at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, rising from his chair, then reached out for her as though about to touch her hair before stopping abruptly to back.  “I was - I thought you would be - but I understand.”  She tried to say his name, but no sound came out except weeping, and she could not even lift her head from the pillow.  “I’ll go,” Marcus told her, almost apologetically, voice hollow and sad.  “I’ll leave you alone.  I just . . . I wanted to be here when you woke up.”  Eyes still pressed closed against the sting of hot tears, she heard him take a few steps towards the door before he stopped and turned back.  “I’m sorry I’m not him,” he said suddenly, as though the words were a surprise even to himself.  Abby froze.  “I understand why you’re . . . why this feels . . .”  He halted abruptly, voice breaking, and it was a long time before he collected himself to begin again.  “It should have been Jake, who came to Earth with you,” he said finally, his voice heavy and resigned, like he was confessing something.  “Whose children you’re carrying now.  It should be Clarke, who was here at your side when you woke up.  I took both of their places, they were your family, I’m just . . . _me_ , but that's not enough.  If you're angry at me, I understand.  I always knew there was a chance that you wouldn’t be able to forgive me, but I just couldn’t let the world go on without you alive in it.  No matter what the cost.  I’m sorry for everything else but that.  I love you, Abby.  I’m more in love with you than I ever thought I was capable of being, with anyone.  Whatever happens next is for you to decide, and I’ll respect whatever you choose.  But I couldn’t go one more day without saying it.”

Then she heard his footsteps fade away, and he was gone.

* * * * *

She remembered very little of what happened after that.

Time passed, and she drifted in and out of consciousness, existing in a kind of gray fog, where she was dimly aware of Jackson's comings and goings, but too weary to engage or respond with anything more than a simple nod when he asked her questions.  Abby was the only person who had been knocked out for more than a day by the gas canisters, and the reason for it had become clear to Jackson the minute he had carried her in his arms down to Med Bay and measured her vital signs for the first time.  She was not dying, he'd noted with relief, and her brain scan was crystal clear.  What she was, he realized immediately, was pregnant - not to mention teetering on the edge of collapsing from undernourishment, fatigue and exhaustion.  Her body was already stretched to its limit, sapping all her energy in order to sustain the process of creating new life inside her womb, as all the while she ran herself ragged with overwork, so desperate was she to keep everyone else alive.  And so her overtaxed system, once forcibly rendered unconscious by the gas, had simply shut down.  She was alive, and more or less healthy, but she'd slept for three days hooked up to IVs of nutritional supplements and vitamins before she'd even regained enough strength to wake.  Now she was conscious, at least, and her mind had begun to resume something like normal function, but Jackson was taking no chances on the health of any of the three lives now in his care until he was sure she was recovered.

He kept her for two more days, but Marcus did not come back.

Med Bay was quiet, for the most part, with Abby by far the most serious patient, giving Jackson an excuse not to leave her side (which he never would have done anyway).  Miller came by sometimes, and Niylah, and even Thelonious once, though she'd been asleep and only told of it after.  Mercifully, none of them spoke to her much.  She drifted in and out of the fog, her mind vacillating between a sleepy, blank numbness she found rather soothing, and intermittent flashes of consciousness where the hundreds of thousands of things she was still struggling to comprehend threatened to overwhelm her.  It was either silence, or chaos, and she found she preferred the silence, and so she spoke very little to Jackson and he spoke very little to her.  But his presence was comforting anyway, as it always had been.  She listened drowsily, eyes pressed closed, as he puttered around or conferred quietly with other patients or checked her vital signs, and little by little, like a lighthouse guiding her out of the fog, his reassuring, reliable Jackson-ness began to slowly draw her back into the world.

It was the afternoon of the second day before he finally ventured to mention the thing that he had been so carefully attempting not to mention - even though his deliberate silence about the topic only drew attention to it, like tracing an outline around blank space.  She opened her eyes to find him at the monitor, measuring his three patients' vital signs.  "All healthy," he pronounced with gentle cheerfulness.  She nodded, trying to smile, but the fog was still too heavy, the chaos inside her mind too loud.  She had no idea how to feel about anything yet, so she was trying very hard not to feel anything at all.

But he lingered by the machine for a long moment, watching, and it began to appear as though more was expected of her, so she managed a weak “Thank you” before the fog swallowed her back up and she lay back against the pillow and closed her eyes.

“Would you like to see them?”

Abby opened her eyes again.  “What?”

“Thelonious got the ultrasound machine working,” Jackson explained.  “Everything in here’s a hundred years old, but then again, so was everything on the Ark.  It took them a little tinkering, but all the equipment in Med Bay is back online again.  I can show you the babies, if you want.”

"Oh." 

She was aware it was an insufficient response, but she couldn't form any other words just then.

“I could send for Kane," he offered hesitantly.  "If you want me to.”

Silence. 

All the things Abby had been hiding from, there inside the fog, began to take shape around her again, the chaos beginning to enfold her.  Marcus.  The lottery.  The gas canisters.  The door.  Raven's brain scan.  The death wave.  The rocket.  _Clarke._

She had almost lost everything.

Jackson pulled the metal chair back up to the side of her bed and sat with his arms folded, sighing with what sounded like compassion tinged with a refreshingly acerbic hint of exasperation that sliced cleanly through the fog.  “You’re going to have to tell him,” he said unexpectedly, a surprising enough opening that Abby turned over onto her side to look at him directly for the very first time.  “He doesn’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

"You woke up and realized where you were, and you were angry," he reminded her, "and then you looked over and saw the monitors and you were sad.  He thinks he did something wrong, Abby.  He doesn’t understand.”  The fog began to clear, bit by bit, powerless against the calm, crisp, steady voice, bringing Abby back to herself enough to be distantly amused by the fact that she recognized this tone perfectly well as the one he used on stubborn patients who'd failed to follow directions.   “I understand, I think,” he went on, a little more gently.  “And Nate does, a little.  Raven sure would, if she were here.  But Marcus wasn’t there on the island, Abby.   He never had to watch the seizures.  He doesn’t know what it was like.  He doesn’t understand what you thought you were protecting him from.”

The heavy swirl of fog, and the noisy, chaotic tumult of sensations outside it, began to flow together and slowly, slowly coalesce into recognizable shapes that clicked neatly into place.  Jackson took her hand in his, and spoke out loud the thing she had not been able to bring herself to say to Marcus, and the world began to make sense again.

“You thought you were dying,” he said simply.  “It all makes sense if you thought that you were dying.  But you never explained that to him, so he doesn’t know.  He thinks it’s _him.”_

Abby stared at him, her heart clenching into a tight knot inside her chest, as she realized Jackson was right.  She remembered the way he'd looked at her as he'd bid goodbye to the sobbing woman in the bed, and it suddenly became clear to her how all of this must have looked to Marcus, how badly he’d misunderstood her. 

They’d both been willing to die, more than once, as long as the other survived, and Abby herself wouldn’t have hesitated to use the gas canisters if it was a matter of saving _his_ life, so she’d known somewhere deep inside that her anger wasn’t really for him.  But Marcus was Marcus, and he’d taken it at face value, as something he must somehow have deserved even though he did not know for what. 

Because she’d never told him about Raven’s hallucinations, the seizures, the EMP, the scan of Raven’s brain, the dream she’d had about Clarke, or any of the rest of it.  She’d told him that day that she didn’t recognize herself, that she no longer believed she deserved to survive, but that wasn’t the truth.  The truth was that she knew she wasn’t going to, and she’d rather see Marcus angry than sad, and until the moment she turned her head and saw those two little jagged yellow lines on the heart monitor she’d been furious that now Marcus would have to watch her die.

And then it all evaporated, just like that, as death was replaced by new life, and she realized the magnitude of what she’d almost done.

It was a sign of how far gone she was that she, a doctor and a mother, had missed all the tell-tale signs of her own body.  She had been desperate, driven to the brink of exhaustion, single-minded in her focus, relentless.  She was dying, and she had one chance left to save the human race, to save the people she loved, and she’d lost all sight of everything that was not the quest for survival – Nightblood, space, the bunker, the conclave – for so long that her own self, her own needs, her own body, dwindled in importance.  Marcus was at the forefront of her mind every moment of the day, but not as an object of love and desire; he'd become the thing she was fighting for, the thing spurring her onward to drive herself harder and harder and harder, the thing she would lose to the poisonous radiation unless she could find a miracle.  In hindsight, of _course_ everyone else in the bunker had known before she did: Jackson, both the Millers, Thelonious, Indra, Octavia, and the tall, weary man with the drawn and haggard face who had slept in the metal chair by her bedside for three days until she finally woke up. 

“I don’t know how to begin,” she said softly, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “There’s too much to say.”

"Understandable," he said agreeably.  "Kane took it pretty much the same way. I don’t think he said a word from the minute I told him over the radio.  David had to open the hatch and shove him back inside.  He was in shock for hours, I think.”

_David._

The single word sliced through the fog and she shook her head a little to clear it, struggling to sit up, feeling her heart squeeze tightly inside her chest as she bean for the first time to realize the sheer magnitude of things that had been happening around her all this time, the sheer number of other people whose suffering had eluded her completely, who did not have the luxury of taking refuge inside the fog.  People who had to keep going, keep getting up in the morning and doing things, even with losses and sorrows like hers now etched into their bones.

"How is Nathan?" she asked.  “Is he all right?”

Jackson's face collapsed a little.  “No,” he admitted, “but I think he will be.”

Abby squeezed his hand.  “I like him,” she said, smiling as Jackson flushed a little and looked away.  “Don’t screw this up.”

“I’m trying,” he muttered.  “I’m not very good at this.” 

Abby burst out laughing. 

It came upon her as rapidly as the tears had two days ago, overtaking her body completely.  Jackson looked on, puzzled, as Abby collapsed in hilarity, shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her face, howling with merriment so loudly that the smattering of other patients in Med Bay began to give her curious, irritated looks.  “I’m sorry,” she finally said, collecting herself, dashing the tears from her eyes.  “It’s just . . . after everything that’s happened in the past few days, the idea that _you_ think _you’re_ the one who’s not very good at relationships . . .” 

The corner of Jackson’s lip twitched at this, as though conceding the truth of her point, and his eyes lit up as he looked down at her, something warm flickering in their brown depths.  “There she is,” he said softly, leaning in and kissing Abby’s forehead.  “That’s my girl.  You came back.” 

Then he wrapped his arms around her and she sank gratefully into them as the world began to shift back into focus again and the weight on her shoulders lifted for the first time since the moment she looked at Raven’s brain scan and believed that her own life was ending.

The apocalypse had come and gone, taking the whole world with it, but Eric Jackson was still here.  He would always be here, as constant as gravity, standing by her side, holding out the exact thing she needed in the palm of his hand.

“Find him,” she murmured.  “Tell him about the island.  Tell him everything.  Tell him I need him here with me when I see them for the first time.  If he forgives me.  If he’ll come.”

Jackson kissed her hair again and stood up.  “If you still think there’s anything for him to forgive,” he told her, giving her hand one last squeeze as he made his way out the door, “you don’t know Marcus Kane at all.”

* * * * *

Jackson was gone a long time.

Abby heard them returning before she saw them, the muffled commotion outside resolving itself into a Marcus Kane who rushed through the moderately-crowded Med Bay toward her side, almost knocking the Trishanakru healer over in his haste.  Jackson followed a few paces behind, and it was clear to Abby, as Marcus sank down onto the edge of the thin mattress and pulled her into his arms, that both men had been crying. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair, as she nestled into against his chest, but she shook her head.

“No,” she whispered back, muffled by the soft cotton of his shirt as she breathed him in, “no, _I’m_ sorry, Marcus, I’m so sorry . . .”

And that was all they could say for a long time.

Jackson gave them a moment, waiting until they pulled away to move closer and lay Abby on her back, drawing up the blankets and rubbing cool blue gel over her skin before pressing the ultrasound wand over the faint swell of her belly which, now that they all knew it was there, was suddenly unignorable.

And then it happened.

Two dim, watery little drumbeats, pulsing in unison.  Two tiny white shapes inside a vast black oval.

 _Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?_ Abby thought to herself, the words appearing unexpectedly in her mind, and she remembered something Marcus had told her once while they were lying in bed, pressing gentle kisses between her breasts and along her collarbone, his fingers between her thighs; he'd told her that Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter because it echoed the rhythm of the human heartbeat, which was part of why his words remained so powerful centuries later, "because we can feel the rhythm of them down to our bones."  She'd laughed at this, and pulled him up to kiss her, heart overflowing with impossible affection for a man who could think about something like that at a time like this, but she'd forgotten it until just now, when Marcus gripped her hand and she looked at the shapes on the screen and she felt the words in her mind thrum in rhythm with the two new little heartbeats echoing through the monitor, and her whole body began to swell with a love so powerful she thought it might lift her off the ground.

“They’re so little,” Marcus breathed, voice low and pulsing with wonder, eyes wide, and Abby thought her heart would crack open inside her chest.  He'd gone all his life believing he would never have one of these, and now he was the first man in the history of the Ark to have _two._ "Abby, look how little they are."

She squeezed his hand, eyes brimming with tears, and laughed as she leaned her head against his shoulder.  "Don't worry," she assured him, "that's the right size.  They'll grow into their father's height later," she added teasingly, causing Marcus' eyes to light up with astonishment and pride.  "Jackson says they're both healthy and growing just fine," she told him.  "I must be . . .”  She counted backwards.  “I think eight weeks along?”  She looked at Jackson for confirmation.

“Yeah,” said Jackson dryly, “and by the way, if you were looking for a way to let me know you and Kane were sleeping together in Polis, you could have just _told_ me.”

“Polis,” said Marcus suddenly, looking up, and Abby knew exactly what he was thinking.  They were both wondering what they would see in five years when they opened that door and stepped back out again.  Lexa was dead and buried, and her towers had crumbled to dust, and the land around it had been seared to ash by fire raining down from the sky.  But no matter what they found there, something of the city that had once stood on that ground would remain with them forever, because the first two children born into the new world had been conceived there, which meant Polis would never be truly gone.

Jackson faded tactfully into the backdrop as Marcus cupped her face in his warm hands, her loose hair tangling in his fingertips, and seized her mouth in his for a kiss.  Abby felt like someone had lit a candle in the middle of a dark cave inside her, she felt light pour through her veins, strength flowing from his body into hers, something restless and pulsing and _alive_ zinging through her bloodstream like electricity.

_Hope._

That’s what Marcus Kane was to her.  That’s what he had always been.  He kissed life back into Abby's bones, like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, like resuscitation, starting a dying heart back up again.  She was going to live, they were going to _live,_ they had passed through the fire and out the other side of it, snatched back from the brink of the deaths they had come so close to choosing, it could all have gone so horribly wrong but it hadn't.  Two near-deaths had been replaced with two new lives, as though some force she could hardly begin to understand – fate, or the universe, or maybe Vera Kane’s God – had intervened with what could only be termed a miracle.

She reached out and took his hand.  “Those are our children, Marcus,” she whispered.  “Yours and mine.  We’re going to have a family.”

He squeezed her hand in his, eyes pressed tightly closed, and she reached out to cradle his jaw in her other hand, sweeping the tears off his cheekbone with the brush of her fingertips.  “We’ll bring them all back together,” he promised her.  “In five years that door will open, and we’ll find them and bring them back.  Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, all of them.  Our whole family.”

“Our whole family,” she repeated, as he pulled her close against his chest, and from that day onward, the bunker was home.

* * *

  **DAY** **TWO HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR**

  _"Hope is everything."  
_

* * * * *

She slept, and dreamed of Jake.

Pregnancy had given her unsettlingly vivid dreams the first time around as well.  It had been her parents, then; when she was pregnant with Clarke she’d dreamed about them nearly every night, scraps of tattered memories long since forgotten suddenly restored in glorious color and detail.  Arguments with her father, birthday dinners, books they’d passed on to her, sitting at the kitchen table while her mother helped her with her science homework.  Little things, domestic things, memories that anchored her to the meaning of this thing called “family” that she would be recreating once the child inside her was in her arms.

This time around, it was Jake.   Just like before, the memories resurfacing weren’t always the big things – their wedding, the day they met, Clarke’s birth.  Instead, she dreamed an infinite succession of tiny moments, intimate, domestic, all the tiny little fragments of human connection that add up to a marriage the way every grain of sand washed up by the ocean adds up to a shore.  The way he used to turn his wedding ring on his finger absentmindedly when he was concentrating on something.  The smell of his wet hair after a shower.  The whisper of his chest hair against her back when she woke up in his arms, the boots she was forever tripping over because in twenty years he never managed to learn to actually put them back in the closet, the way he liked to stroke the back of her knees when they were making love, the taste of his breath when he kissed her on his way out the door after his morning cup of coffee.

Pregnant with her first child, and missing her own parents, she slept among the stars and dreamed of things that meant “family,” memories that told her what the life she was building could be.  It was the same now, only this time, she dreamed of things that meant “husband,” as she slept underground in Marcus Kane’s arms.

On the bunker’s very top floor, above the massive hallways filled with room after room of bunks, there were three private suites, comfortably appointed with their own washrooms and sitting rooms.  Two were of modest size, flanking one in the center which was significantly larger, clearly designed for Bill Cadogan himself.  Abby had expected Thelonious to assert ownership of this room, but he’d surprised her on the day they all moved in by walking right past it, carrying his boxes and bags down to the same utilitarian bunk room that housed all the other engineers.  Once Octavia won the conclave, Abby naturally assumed the room would be hers.  She didn’t know, until Jackson released her from sickbay, that Octavia had made other arrangements.  The three rooms on the upper floor were to be given to the young leader and to her two closest advisors, an edict with which no one argued; so Octavia took one of the smaller private apartments, and Indra the other, sharing with her daughter.  But the one in the center she had given to Kane, to share with Abby and their children.

Her longing for Clarke was a constant ache running through every moment of Abby’s every day, like a dark ribbon woven through a colorful tapestry; but even so, it was remarkable how quickly the bunker began to feel like home.

She could be happy here.

_They could be happy._

Marcus, endearingly, was as entranced by every detail of her pregnancy as Jake had been, captivated by everything from the feel of the babies kicking and the ever-more-detailed ultrasound images, to the less pleasant surprises, like her sudden aversion to the smell of meat.  He raided Med Bay for books and resources, learned how to massage Abby’s aching feet and how much water she should be drinking and how to soothe her to sleep when the babies were keeping her awake.  His patience was nothing short of heroic at this point, given that she was nine and a half months pregnant and everything hurt.

The twins were late, and Abby was miserable.  Jackson had ordered her onto bed three weeks ago, and since she was trapped in a bunker where everyone knew her, it was impossible for her to get too far outside her quarters without someone radioing down to Med Bay to rat her out.  She was allowed to pace the halls, if accompanied, and she sat in on council meetings while lying grumpily on her back on the sofa in Cadogan’s office, which at least gave her mind something to do.  But she was banned from any real work, and mostly confined to their quarters – which had seemed positively opulent when she moved in, in contrast to the gray rows of bunks, but which now felt as confining as a prison cell.

Pregnancy was making her _insane._

Carrying twins, it turned out, was not like carrying one baby times two.  Through some particularly diabolical calculus, this pregnancy was somehow ten times more uncomfortable than her first one had been, exacerbated by the fact that all of her and Jackson’s knowledge of twins was, in fact, entirely academic and theoretical.  Contraceptive chips on the Ark did more than simply prevent pregnancy; they suppressed all the genetic coding for multiple births.  None of them had been entirely certain how this happened – to mortify Jackson while he examined her, Abby liked to point out that Kane’s height and the thickness of his hair and beard were secondary indicators of a probably very high sperm motility count, while Kane, seated at her side, countered with the suggestion that Abby probably possessed some kind of excessively fertile womb (both comments which Jackson had begged them dozens of times to stop making in his presence).  His own best theory was that the EMP which disconnected Abby from the City of Light short-circuited her contraceptive chip in more ways than they’d been able to measure, but the truth was that he didn’t know any more than they did.  The Sky People’s medical knowledge had not prepared them for this.

The Grounders’, however, had.  Among their clans, twins were moderately common, and anyone with any expertise in healing or medicine had midwifed at least one pair.  Niylah, in fact, had helped deliver several, and gamely volunteered her services as Jackson’s assistant for when the babies came.

 _If_ they ever came, Abby thought darkly as she tossed and turned restlessly in bed.

She felt Marcus stirring, his hand resting protectively on her belly and his breath warm on her neck.  They hadn’t spent long enough in Polis to settle into any kind of domesticity, everything had been heightened and frantic and new, and then over far too quickly when they were forced to separate.  It was only now that they were finally beginning to put down roots, developing the kind of mundane habits like what they liked for breakfast and who slept on which side of the bed.  All those little, intimate things which were so cherished and familiar to Abby, and so revelatory to Marcus, who still found it some kind of miracle that Abby was there every night when he closed his eyes, and there every morning when he opened them.

She heard the faint chime of her alarm clock and reached out to tap the panel in the wall to shut it off, stirring as though preparing to wake.  She had hardly slept, her whole body ached, and she could feel herself already growing irritable and short-tempered even though it was only five a.m. and the day hadn't started yet. 

Marcus’ arms tightened around her.  “Stay,” she heard his voice muffled by the tangle of her hair as he nuzzled closer.  “Council’s not ‘til ten.  Nothing before then.”

“Honey –"

“Babies need sleep," he mumbled drowsily into her shoulder, before replacing the words with kisses.

“They can sleep while I work.”

 _“You_ need sleep.”

“Marcus –"

"Stay," he said again, mouth warm against her skin as his hand slipped lower, over the swell of her round belly and below, to the apex of her thighs, as he shifted his weight behind her, and all her early-morning irritability evaporated, replaced with a fondly exasperated chuckle.

Men were very predictable.

This was Marcus' favorite symptom of Abby's unstoppable maelstrom of pregnancy hormones, just as it had been Jake's. She could recall it vividly, so many afternoons of sneaking off on her lunch break to go meet him in some dark corner near Engineering where he would press her up against a cold metal wall, unzip her jeans, and laugh to find her already soaking wet.  She was like a battery that was permanently charged, the slightest touch flipped the switch and then she was ready. 

Marcus' fingertips stroked the soft hair of her cunt – thicker and more lush than before, another peculiar hormonal side effect which delighted him – and roused her into a shivery state of aching desire, making her squirm impatiently against him, a silent demand for more.

She’d warned him she'd probably get like this – his boundless enthusiasm for all her stories about pregnancy, about Jake, about Clarke, about childbirth, never ceased to delight her – and, amusingly, he had taken it on as a kind of personal challenge.  The fuller her belly, the more creative they’d had to be, since none of the positions she liked best worked anymore; climbing on top and riding him, or kneeling on all fours, were exhausting work with her muscles so permanently fatigued, but Marcus was terrified that he would crush the babies if he was on top while Abby was on her back (no matter how many times she had explained to him that it was impossible).  After an enjoyable (albeit logistically complicated) period of trial and error, they’d finally settled on a favorite, and liked it so much that they now slept this way.  As Marcus fondled her cunt, nuzzling drowsily into her shoulder, she could feel the swell of his cock begin to stiffen against the back of her thighs, and sighed with pleasure and relief as he finally angled himself to push inside her.  

Heat flushed up and down her whole body as Marcus exhaled a long, slow "mmmmm" of contentment as he gripped the thick shaft of his cock in his hand and ran it lazily up and down the seam of her warm, aching labia, letting her wetness coat the swollen head.  "Marcus," she whispered impatiently, and felt the warm rush of breath on her skin as he gave a low, soft chuckle.  But whatever she might have said next vanished into a sharp, high-pitched gasp as his fingertips began to circle her clit before finally, finally, pushing inside.

"Yes," she panted as his hips began to rock against hers.  Restless, hungry, she tried to shift her weight backwards to take him deeper, to capture more of him, but he shook his head.  Pregnancy sex with Marcus Kane meant he would do all the work himself, shielding her from unnecessary exertion as much as he could.  Hyper-aware of Abby’s state of permanent exhaustion, aches, pains, sore muscles, swollen joints, and general fatigue, Marcus liked it best when he knew she could relax, and let his muscles, his strength, his body, carry all the labor and bring pleasure to them both.  It triggered some endearingly primal impulse in him, somehow; he'd never minded letting her take the lead, but there was something about the heavy swell of her belly beneath the palm of his hand that made him crave the sensation of holding her, enfolding her, fucking her, cradling her, letting his big powerful body wrap around and inside her and hold her with all his strength.

“Let me,” he said to her, as he always said to her.  “Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.  I’ll take care of you.”  He kissed her shoulder.  “Harder?”  She nodded.  “Okay.  Just tell me how you like it.”

“Deep,” she whispered, as he palmed her hip and draped one thigh over hers to pull himself in closer.  “Don’t hold back.”

This had been another adjustment that had surprised them both.  Abby was far more comfortable simply taking charge in bed and doing whatever she liked than issuing instructions, putting her wants into words, letting Marcus give things to her instead of taking them herself.  But she realized very swiftly that nothing on earth turned him on as much as being told what to do.  "Harder, on my clit," she murmured, then gave a sharp, breathy little exclamation as he did exactly as he was told, pressure increasing as the tip of his finger circled the hard, swollen little bud in perfect synchronicity with the heavy, in-and-out slide of his cock inside her. 

"Let go," he murmured into her hair, as she melted into his arms, soft, pliant, sinking back against him, letting herself be cradled, letting herself be fucked, handing herself over to Marcus with perfect trust that he would give her everything she needed.  She was so tired, she hurt everywhere, everything was so heavy and difficult, but here in Marcus' arms he held her like she weighed nothing at all.  "You like big men," Callie had teased her once when she'd first begun dating Jake, "because you don't really trust that anyone's strong enough to catch you when you fall."  Abby had swatted her with a book, but there was more than a little truth in it.  Abby was used to carrying everybody.  Even when she'd had a husband, she'd struggled to let go; she was a doctor, a councilor, a mother, she had so many people relying on her all the time, and as much as she'd adored Jake, that little streak of irresponsible rebellion that had made him so uncontrollably sexy also made him, occasionally, another one of the people she was forever looking after.

But it wasn't like that with Marcus. 

Marcus was the only person she'd ever known who met her stubborn intransigence with his own.  Unstoppable force meeting immutable object.  She could never make Marcus do anything, or vice versa.  It was like negotiating with a mountain.  On the Ark, it had driven her crazy, but now it was the thing she loved about him most.  His permanence, his strength, his stability.  She could fall from the highest height and Marcus Kane would catch her, over and over again, every time, with perfect trust that she would always do the same for him.  And so she began to learn, for the first time in her life, what it might be like to allow herself, bit by bit, piece by piece, to loosen her white-knuckle grip on the world and sink back into somebody else's arms. 

So when he told her to let go, she did.  She went soft and unresisting, she let him do all the work, she closed her eyes and felt nothing but pleasure.  Marcus' fingertip was firm and deft against her clit, the delicious scritch of his beard brushing her skin as his lips and tongue moved hungrily along her throat and shoulder, and the thick, hot, heavy length of his cock stretched her blissfully open as he picked up speed and began to thrust harder, harder, harder, until the first orgasm of the morning swept over her and left her shuddering in his arms.  He slowed his pace, cradling her gently while she descended, but he didn't stop. 

She said his name again, a breathy, keening sound, like a plea, and he responded with something like a low, animal growl against her skin, which made her shiver.  She'd fallen in love with his gentleness, down here on the ground, the way hardship and self-knowledge had sanded down his harsh edges and weathered him like wind against mountains; it had been those first glimpses of the new man he was becoming that had first taught her to see him with different eyes.  All of that was new.  But she would be lying to herself if she denied that there had been, every once in awhile, back up on the Ark, a flicker of something like want, drawn out by his flinty, sharp-edged stubbornness.  She hadn't loved that Marcus Kane, but he'd appeared in her dreams more than once, and now it was a delicious turn-on when flickers of that past self reemerged when they were in bed.  The new Marcus cradled her body with impossible tenderness, attuned to her every movement and sound and breath, but there was more than a little of the old Marcus Kane in the sheer force of the way he fucked her.  And he was particularly animated today, for some reason - determined to keep her in bed as long as possible, perhaps, in the hopes that another good orgasm or two would send her back to sleep.  The babies woke up after her second orgasm, and he felt them stirring in her belly almost as soon as she did, his hand moving upwards from her cunt to press protectively against the swell of her flesh and savor the sensation of restless movement inside her.  Jake had experienced some qualms with late-term pregnancy sex, squeamish in some amusing way about the idea of "doing it in front of the baby," even when Abby patiently explained that the baby in her belly had no idea what was happening and this was hardly something which would lead to psychological trauma later in life.  But Marcus loved it, loved feeling the life stirring inside Abby's womb, which he'd helped place there, while they made love.  That primal male animal impulse again, she thought, a latent possessiveness he'd never learned to develop before because he'd never had anything that really belonged to him.  But Abby and the babies were his, as he was theirs, and the astonishment of belonging to each other led him to hold onto her without letting go.

He came inside her with his hand pressed onto her belly and his lips buried in the curve of her throat, groaning her name over and over again, and she was so close already that his final, fierce thrust tipped her back over the edge as well, as they cried out together.

And then it happened.

Marcus, predictably, noticed it first.  Abby collapsed back against the pillows, panting, spent from three orgasms, fighting to catch her breath, as roiling, shifting sensations within her belly began to tug at her.  She closed her eyes, breathing hard, but opened them again when she felt Marcus patting gently at her cheek to bring her back.

"I know I'm good, but I'm not that good," he said dryly, eyes flickering down Abby's naked body to the spreading pool of damp between her thighs.

"What?"

"It's time," he said, kissing her mouth, an incandescent glow of delight suffusing his entire face.  "Your water just broke."

Abby sat up.

"Our babies are here," she whispered, and he nodded, eyes bright with tears.

"Yes," he murmured back.  "Our babies are here."

* * * * *

It lasted for eleven hours.

She learned that afterwards, of course; while it was happening, she lost all sense of time passing, as though the world alternated between speeding up and standing still.  There were long periods which – dazed from pain, exertion and very heavy medication – she found could not accurately remember.  A trick of biology perhaps, blurring the recollection of childbirth’s horrors so only the joy stood out in hindsight.  Or maybe simply the body’s response to shattering pain, endured for hour upon hour without ceasing.  It had been the same when Clarke was born, too.  She entered a kind of detached state, her body knowing exactly what to do as her mind drifted off somewhere else, as though disconnected from her body.

But there were flashes that stood out, crystal-clear.

She remembered Niylah, calm and strong at her back, slim strong fingers massaging Abby’s shoulders and pressing every now and then against pulse points all over her body that magically dulled the screaming pain in her belly and abdomen into no more than a distant ache, allowing her to recuperate for a few breaths between contractions.

And she remembered Jackson, anxious but focused, wearing that look of intense concentration he wore on only his most serious cases, as he dedicated himself to the process of delivering Abby Griffin’s children into the world as though it were the most important thing he would ever do in his life.  His hands were deft and strong, and never shook once, and even through the haze of pain swimming before her eyes as the hours passed, the part of Abby Griffin that never ceased being a doctor could not help being proud and impressed at his impeccable technique.  She’d trained him well.

But most of all, she remembered Marcus, gentle and steady, ever-fixed by her side, the calming rhythm of his slow deep breaths – in, out, in, out – coaxing her into doing the same.  He was the most real thing in the room.  In the world.  She was lost at sea but Marcus was a lighthouse, the only thing she could hold onto that would keep her from slipping away.  She remembered the way stroked her tangled, sweaty hair away from her face with impossible love in his brown eyes, and she remembered the way his eyes lit up when Jackson put his firstborn child in his arms, as though he was witnessing a miracle.

The boy came first, strong and healthy and yowling with impressive force to alert all of Med Bay that his little lungs were working just fine, thank you very much.  Jackson handed him to Marcus, who cradled the tiny, red, shrieking thing, smeared in blood and amniotic fluid, wet little tufts of wood-brown hair sticking up crazily all over his head, and looked down at it with dazed, adoring eyes like it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

It was impossible not to fall in love with him all over again, after that.

The girl came second, taking her time, giving her mother a moment to breathe again before making her way into the world about half an hour after her brother.  Jackson took the boy over to be measured and vaccinated and then handed him over to Niylah, who bathed and wrapped him, then paced back and forth across Med Bay to rock him in her arms so his father could return his focus to Abby, who was struggling.  The second baby had shifted in place as her sibling made his way out, something Niylah explained was common in multiple births; but she had shifted too far, and gotten stuck, forcing Jackson to reach inside and align her properly to keep her from turning breech.  Abby screamed in pain at the build, build, build of pressure inside her, threatening to rip her apart; but Jackson knew exactly what he was doing.  His hands were sure and his grip was firm and he took the tiny, stubborn girl’s body in strong but gentle fingers to move her into place as the contractions began again until, a few pushes later, out she finally came, screeching, if possible, even louder than her brother had.

“They’ll be singers, maybe,” said Niylah in amusement as a spent Jackson finished cutting the umbilical cord before sinking back in his chair, stripping off his gloves and closing his eyes.  While nowhere near as spent as Abby, he’d been at this for eleven hours straight, too, and needed a moment to catch his breath before Niylah returned to set the tiny boy creature, wrapped in his soft blue blanket, against his mother’s breast and take the tiny girl creature to be washed and dressed.   “Quite a pair of lungs on both of them.”

“Of course they’re loud,” Jackson muttered as he followed her over to administer the little girl’s vaccines and take her measurements, “look who their parents are.  You never knew these two when they hated each other’s guts, but they could _really_ go at it.”

Marcus laughed at this, conceding the point, as he reached out to brush Abby’s hair out of her face.  Niylah returned shortly with the tiny girl and laid her down on her mother’s breast next to her brother, where she blinked up at them with a politely puzzled expression, like a traveler who has been given wrong directions and gotten lost.  Abby, too dazed and exhausted to say anything, gazed down at the tiny, pink little creatures in her arms as Niylah’s gentle, deft hands reached under the blankets to bathe Abby’s legs and torso with warm water, sluicing all the blood and fluids away, then carefully removing the soiled sheets to replace them with fresh ones, before she and Jackson departed to give the family some privacy. 

The hospital bed was not large, but there was just barely room for Marcus to kick off his shoes and carefully climb in beside Abby, curling up against her to let her rest against his shoulder.  For a long time, neither of them spoke, just stared down at the two little bundles in exhausted, overwhelmed, blissful silence.

Then “Hi,” Abby finally said to them softly, smiling down at the two tiny, serious faces.  “I’m your mom.”

“And I’m your dad,” said Marcus, then inhaling sharply with astonishment as four bright blue eyes immediately swiveled to stare at him.

“They’ve been listening to your voice for nine months,” she murmured, pressing a kiss against his shoulder.  “They already know you.”

“Can I hold one?” he asked hesitantly.

“You don’t have to _ask,”_ she reminded him, laughing.  “They’re yours, remember?”

He didn’t answer at first, but curled up more tightly against her body on the bed, his head resting against hers on the one thin pillow, before lifting the tiny pink baby girl bundle off Abby’s chest.  Abby had expected him to be uncertain, somehow, the way Jake had been, forever terrified of holding Clarke for those first few weeks out of fear that he would drop her.  But Marcus wasn’t frightened at all.  He cradled his daughter in his arms like he’d been holding babies all his life, like he’d been born for it, and Abby watched the baby girl’s eyes droop contentedly closed as she drifted off to sleep, soothed by the steady rise and fall of her father’s chest.

“She loves you already,” Abby whispered.  “Look at that.”

“I never thought I would have this,” he murmured unexpectedly, causing Abby to turn and look at him.  “I gave up such a long time ago.  I never thought . . .”

His voice broke.  Abby reached out and squeezed his hand.

“You’re a father, Marcus Kane,” she murmured, as tears streaked down his face.  “They’re ours for the rest of our life.”

 

* * * * *

It had been Abby, eighteen years ago, who chose Clarke’s name, in honor of the cantankerous old Earth Skills teacher in whose class she and Jake had first met when he was nine and she was eleven. She had been through this already, once before, and so many of the joys and miracles of parenthood were familiar to her; but everything was new to Marcus, and she didn’t want him to miss anything.  So she had handed over to him full power to name both of the children.

(“That’s not to say I won’t veto,” she had reminded him pointedly, “if you pick something ridiculous.  We are not naming our children Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.”  Marcus, sitting at his desk in their quarters, did not respond, but made as though to forcefully cross something off a list on the paper in front of him, earning him a pillow hurled at the back of his head from Abby’s place on the sofa.)

But when, four days after their birth, Marcus still hadn’t told her what he’d come up with, Abby decided it was time to put her foot down.

“We can’t keep calling them Boy and Girl,” she pointed out reasonably.

“We have to have a christening ceremony.  That’s when you give children their names.”

“Only if you’re religious.  I’m not religious.”

“It’s a _tradition.”_

“Clarke had a name and a birth certificate before we left Med Bay.”

“Well, Jake was too soft on you.  He should have put his foot down.”

“He didn’t care about the christening ceremony either.  He didn’t even want a wedding.  He was happy just going to the registrar and filing the relocation and name change paperwork on our lunch breaks.”

“Where’s the romance in _that_?”

“We did have sex in a storage closet on the way back from the registrar’s office, if that helps.”

“You know, with parents like that, sometimes I think it’s a miracle Clarke turned out as well as she did.”

“Don’t worry,” Abby retorted cheerfully, “we have eighteen years to screw these ones up, too.”

Christenings, it turned out, were an even more momentous ritual among the Grounder clans than they’d been on the Ark; any hope of avoiding a massive public ceremony in front of all twelve hundred residents of the bunker dissipated by the end of the first week.  Gaia waited a polite few days before paying the exhausted new parents a visit and, having accurately assessed the lay of the land, appealed directly to the children’s father on the question of a traditional naming ceremony.  Faced with a united front composed of Marcus, Gaia, Indra, Octavia, three clan leaders, and even – improbably – Jaha, Abby had thrown up her hands and conceded the whole thing, “as long as I don’t have to dress up or plan it or do any of the work.”

Thelonious had tried for days, to no avail, to attempt to establish any kind of contact with the Ark, in the hopes that Abby could give the good news to her daughter and let Clarke listen in on the ceremony; but without access to the surface, he was little he could do.  Still, it was the sort of unexpected kindness Abby used to remember from the days when he was only Jake’s best friend, before he became the Chancellor, and it made her feel as though the long-buried humanity he’d submerged when he was elected had begun to break through again.

It was remarkable, the way the birth of the children changed things . . . and not just for their parents.  In a way, Octavia pointed out to Abby once, it was as though they’d finally begun to think of themselves as one people, now that they were united by something so momentous that every one of them could understand.  The vital importance of healthy children was lost on none of them; for the Sky People, the miracle of twin births reminded them that even though they were once again trapped inside a confined space with finite resources, fighting for survival, they did not have to be the ruthless people the Exodus Charter had made them on the Ark.  Watching Marcus Kane walk the halls at three o’clock in the morning rocking a crying baby back to sleep was proof enough of that.  And for the Grounders, to whom twins were sacred, the Chancellors of Skaikru giving birth to a pair of strong, healthy babies underground was a sign of hope and good fortune, an omen of possibility.  All of them imagined what the future would look like in five years when they emerged from that bunker; now they asked themselves, what would the world be, when Kane and Abby’s children were old enough to inherit it?  What kind of home would those twelve hundred people inside the bunker build and leave behind for them?

And so perhaps it should not have been a surprise that every clan attended the christening, bodies packed into the stairwells and pressed against the railings as far up as the eye could see.  But it was a surprise to Abby, as she descended from their upper-level quarters and made her way through the crowd down to the open space below, where Kane, Gaia and the children’s godparents were already waiting.

She’d let Marcus have this because it was clearly important to him, because he’d marked it somehow as a cornerstone of fatherhood, a thing he had to get right; so she’d put on clean clothes and let Niylah braid her hair and was prepared to endure a lengthy Grounder ritual with heroic patience, even though all she wanted to do was sleep.

But as the crowd parted to let her through, with her babies in her arms, she rounded the corner and saw something sitting on a pedestal in the center of the dais where the other stood.

It was the Eden Tree.

 _Dammit, Marcus_ , she thought as she blinked back tears, looking up at him as she mounted the stairs to stand beside him, marveling at his extraordinary ability to find his way straight to the center of her heart with the smallest gesture or word.

Abby’s Trigedasleng was improving rapidly, though it lacked the fluency of Kane’s easy pronunciation (“don’t worry,” Jackson had sighed to her once as they struggled to communicate with a Grounder child patient who spoke no English, “we’ve got five years stuck in this bunker to get better”).  Still, she was able to catch bits and pieces of Gaia’s rite, calling on Skaikru’s ancestors to grant them courage and grace and strength, praying that they would grow up to be symbols of unity and to help build a new world where all clans were one clan.

Then she held out her hand, and Marcus stepped forward, lifting the baby girl from Abby’s arms as her godparents – Indra and Octavia – took their place beside Gaia.  Indra was predictably solemn, shoulders straight and head high, a clan elder participating in a sacred rite.  Octavia was composed whenever her face was in sight of the crowd, but Abby caught her more than once making wide-eyed goofy faces at the babies when she thought no one was looking, until a well-placed nudge from a very stern Indra put an end to it.

“The child’s father will speak of his daughter’s naming,” announced Gaia, her warm, rich voice sounding echoes through the bunker, reverberating from the bottom floor all the way to the top.  “Speak, Marcus kom Wonkru.”

The crowd fell silent as Kane, his infant daughter in his hands, stepped forward to speak.

“My mother was a woman of great faith among our people,” he told the crowd, as many of Skaikru mixed in with the rows of Grounders nodded in remembrance and agreement.  “She raised me on stories of our ancestors from thousands of years before – ancestors who lived and died centuries before Praimfaya, which means they belong not to Skaikru alone, but to all the clans.  She told me the legend of how our ancestors once believed the world came to be.  A great and powerful God brought the earth and sky, the sun and moon, into being, and created a garden called Paradise where no pain or suffering entered, where life was eternal, where all living beings existed in peace.  He created a man named Adam to inhabit this place, and a woman to be his equal, whose name was Lilith.  Lilith wanted to eat from the trees whose fruit gave infinite knowledge, and she wanted to rule the garden equally with Adam; but both Adam and his God soon came to believe that the woman must be subordinate to the man.  She was given a choice: submit to Adam, or be cast out of Paradise forever.  But Lilith held her head high, and said to God that she was lesser than no man.  And so she was sent away, and God created a second woman named Eve, who was taught to be compliant and submissive, and Lilith went off into the wilderness alone.”  He looked down at the baby girl in his arms.  “It may seem strange to those of you who also grew up on those stories,” he said thoughtfully, “to name a child after a woman who was deemed for centuries to be the root of all the dark and evil things which exist in the world.  But,” he added wryly, looking from the child over to her mother, “I have always had a fondness for women who refuse to obey the rules, who choose stubborn rebelliousness over unresisting compliance, who are willing to sacrifice ease and comfort in order to do what they believe is the right thing.”  He kissed the top of the baby girl’s head.  “I name my daughter Lilith Vera,” he said, eyes meeting Abby’s, bright with tears.  “The first girl born to the survivors of the human race will be named for the first woman who lived on earth, a woman who was brave enough to leave the only home she knew rather than allow herself to be diminished.  Her second name comes from my mother, who tended to this tree every day of her life.  When we reach the ground again, Lilith will plant it in the soil and tend it to mark our new home.”

“Lilith Vera,” pronounced Gaia solemnly, lifting the child in her arms, dipping her fingers in the bowl of water beside the Eden Tree and flicking the droplets from her fingers onto the tree’s soil three times. _“Raun woda, tri-de na ste yuj_ ,” intoned the two godmothers in solemn voices as Gaia’s still-damp fingertips marked the symbols of all twelve clans in water on the tiny girl’s head, hands and feet. 

 _“Raun woda, yongon-de ne wada klin,”_ replied the Grounders in the crowd – joined by Marcus, Jackson and Miller, who had clearly been practicing. 

 _“’Through water, this tree grows strong.  Through water, this child will be washed clean,’”_ Jackson, at her elbow, translated quietly for her.  “Octavia made us practice for like two hours.”

Then, “The child’s father will speak of his son’s naming,” pronounced Gaia, before Abby could say anything else, and Marcus took the small baby boy from Abby’s arms and returned to his place at the front of the crowd, accompanied by the other set of godparents, both young men still and focused and uncharacteristically serious-looking.

“My mother told me the stories of our ancestors, thousands of years ago, who journeyed through wilderness and desert to find a new home for their people,” Marcus told the crowd.  “There was among them a man who became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, a man whose descendants were said to have repopulated the world.  He also happens,” he added, looking back over at Abby, “to share a name with the best man I have ever known.  His name was Jacob.”

Abby’s heart stopped beating.  She stared at Marcus, eyes wide with shock, as he looked back at her, something in his eyes like a question, like he wanted to know if he had done right before he proceeded.  

Her eyes shone bright with tears as she gave him a nod that meant “yes” and “thank you” and “I love you” all at the same time.

“We are one people, one clan,” he went on, turning back to the gathered people, “and so I name my son after two men – one of Skaikru and one of Trikru – who I was fortunate to call friend.  Men who died with the hope of making a better world.  Men who had faith in the goodness of people.  I name my son Jacob Lincoln.”

Octavia’s head snapped up sharply, her dark eyes staring at Kane.  She hadn’t known either, then.  Abby watched as Indra and Gaia turned to look at him too; all eyes in the room were on Kane.  And suddenly, it happened.  Something undefinable began to pass through the crowd, a low murmuring, something shifting into place, something that felt like healing.  There were many people in that room who remembered Jake Griffin, and even more who had known Lincoln kom Trikru, and all of them knew what it meant for this man to pass on their names – and, even more, the memories of who they were – to keep them alive.

As Gaia lifted the child in her arms to speak his name for the crowd to repeat, Marcus met Octavia’s eyes, tears streaming down her face, before turning back to Abby, who was looking at him with much the same expression.

 _“Raun woda, tri-de na ste yuj,”_ Miller and Jackson repeated, slowly and with tremendous care, as Gaia flicked water on the roots of the tree.

 _“Raun woda, yongon-de ne wada klin,”_ Abby murmured along with the crowd, eyes locked on Marcus, who had somehow done the thing they’d thought impossible, and shown them a future where all twelve clans were one. 

“Jacob Lincoln and Lilith Vera,” said Gaia somberly.  “First children born to Wonkru in our new home.  May they grow in wisdom and in strength to take their place among the leaders of our clan.” 

Indra lifted baby Lilith high in the air, as Jackson lifted Jacob.  The crowd burst into tears and applause.

“I love you,” said Abby, in a voice so quiet only Marcus could hear her, and reached out to take his hand.


	3. Exodus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The LORD said unto them: This month will stand at the head of your calendar; you will reckon it the first month of the year. The day of your liberation will be a day of remembrance for you, which your future generations will celebrate. You will keep this practice forever for yourselves and your descendants, when you enter the land that was promised.”  
> \--Exodus 12: 1-3, 13-14, 24

**DAY TWO THOUSAND SEVENTY**

_"You are a terrible influence."  
_

* * * * *

**JACOB**

“Ow!”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“You’re kicking!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!  That was your foot!”

“Nuh-uh, that was an _accident_.”

“Was not.”

“Was too!”

Uncle Eric rolled over onto his side, propping his head up on his elbow and shooting both of the complainers a stern look.  “Do I have to separate you children?  Because I will.”

They looked at each other sheepishly.

“Sorry,” said Jake.

“Sorry,” said Uncle Nate.

Uncle Eric sighed and flopped back down on the pillow.  “That’s more like it.”

But Uncle Nate didn’t really _look_ sorry.  The moment one uncle closed his eyes again, the other made a smug face at Jake, then kicked him again under the covers . . . but more discreetly this time.  Jake stifled a giggle, and kicked him back, little bare feet colliding with his uncle’s kneecaps.

Only he overshot the mark, and hit the wrong uncle.

“That’s it,” said Uncle Eric with finality, sitting up and glaring at them both.  “One of you is sleeping on the floor.”

“He is!” said Jake accusingly, pointing at his uncle.  “He started it!”

“No way, kid,” Uncle Nate retorted, burrowing rather theatrically into his pillow, closing his eyes and pretending to snore.  “This is _my_ bed.   _You_ sleep on the floor.”

“But it’s my birthday!”

“Not until 12:01 it’s not.”

“What time is it now?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Oh.”

“Remind me again how old you’re gonna be tomorrow?  What was it, thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

Jake giggled into his uncle’s shoulder, the kicking forgiven.  “ _Five!”_

“Oh, right.  I forgot.  Well, you seem older.”

“There are other people trying to sleep in this room,” Uncle Eric reminded them pointedly.

“Sorry,” whispered Jake again, trying not to giggle.

“Yeah, sorry,” echoed Uncle Nate, who still didn’t seem sorry at all, for any of it.

Uncle Nate and Uncle Eric didn’t have their own private rooms like Mom and Dad and the aunties next door did.  They lived on the bottom floor, where there were great big rooms with bunches of people in them.  Jake liked the uncles’ room because it had bunk beds, and they had a _top_ one, which was way cooler than sharing a cot with his sister.  

At the beginning the bunk rooms were just rows and rows of empty beds, Uncle Nate had said, but that was almost five years ago and it was a lot more homey now.  Lots of people who were couples had done what the uncles did, scooting two bunks together to share the top and then using the bottom for storage, passing on the spare mattresses to somebody else so families could all live together.  On the metal platforms where the mattresses used to be were boxes and shelves where they kept all their stuff, one side for Uncle Eric and one for Uncle Nate.  Two other couples, plus Uncle T, shared this room, and they’d all done the same.  And they’d made little rooms, too, with sheets of metal hooked to the ceiling that hung down and made kind of a wall between each bunk, which Jake liked to bang on like a drum when nobody was in the room trying to sleep.  Uncle T had said the metal was something called “salvage” that he’d brought with them to the bunker from the outside place, the one that had horses and trees and you could see the sky.  Uncle T had a little wall around his bunk that he said was from the bedroom that used to be his, way back a long time ago when he and Mom and Dad all lived up in space.  Jake liked Uncle T’s bunk because the metal wall was bumpy and made a cool sound if you ran your fingers up and down it, though he’d learned not to do it if Uncle Eric was around because Uncle Eric thought it was super annoying.

Uncle T wasn’t his real name. His real name was something long that he could never get Jake and Lily to say quite right, so finally he had sighed and given up trying.  Lily found Uncle T confusing; he was very serious and didn’t smile much and he always talked to them like they were tiny grownups.  But Jake liked him.  Uncle T had been kids together with his parents and Big Jake, who he’d been named after, _and_ he’d been there when Clarke was little, so he had all kinds of stories that even Mom and Dad didn’t remember.  Plus he was teaching Jake how to play chess, which Jake wasn’t very good at yet – mostly he liked making the piece shaped like a horse head make roaring noises at the other horse – but he could set the pieces up in the right order all by himself now, which Uncle T said was a very good start.

Uncle T and the other bunk neighbors were asleep when Mom brought Jake downstairs in his pajamas to tuck him in bed between his uncles, giving him a kiss on the forehead.  Then, with her mischief face on, she _also_ gave a kiss to Uncle Eric, to make Jake giggle.  “No fair, where’s mine?” complained Uncle Nate, so Mom came around to the other side of the bed and tucked in Uncle Nate’s blankets like he was little and patted his head and gave him a big loud smacky forehead kiss, which made Jake giggle so hard he started to snort.  “You brought that on yourself,” Uncle Eric told him, as Mom waved them goodnight and closed the door behind her.

Jake and Lily sometimes took their afternoon naps with the uncles, or with the aunties, or in the super-cool beds in Med Bay that went up and down, but they’d never slept a whole night anywhere but their own beds before.  This was extra special, because tomorrow was their birthday, and Mom and Dad were putting together some super-secret present that meant they had to be gone from their room all day and all night so they could get it ready.  Lily was three floors up in the aunties' room – well, technically it was Auntie Niylah’s room only, plus seven other people, but she only slept there sometimes because Auntie O’s room upstairs was private and a lot nicer and Auntie Niylah usually slept there.  Jake and Lily’s cot was squished between Mom and Dad’s bed and the wall that they shared with Auntie O’s bedroom on the other side, and sometimes they would tap on the wall back and forth to each other until Dad told everybody to be quiet and go to sleep.  (Sometimes he was a little bit Auntie O’s dad too, which Jake and Lily found hilarious.)  Her bed was really big and nice and soft, way better than the bunks, and she let Jake and Lily jump on it with her sometimes when she was babysitting.  But when they’d asked her how come she was sleeping downstairs with Lily in Auntie Niylah’s bunk instead of all of them just sharing her bed next door, she got all weird and muttered something about his parents needing some "privacy," and then her cheeks went all pink and so did Dad’s and they both looked embarrassed and stared down at their shoes but nobody would say why.

Grownups were very weird sometimes.

Jake’s eyes drooped closed and he burrowed happily under the blankets, snuggled up against Uncle Nate’s chest, as Uncle Eric gave him a kiss on the top of his head and then leaned over him to kiss Uncle Nate.  Jake kept his eyes closed for this part.  The uncles kissed a _lot,_ like Mom and Dad did.  The aunties not as much.  Auntie O could be a _lot_ of fun, but when she was with everyone else she had to be the big tough boss person, so she and Auntie Niylah only got kissy when there weren’t people around.  There were a _lot_ of lovey grownups around them all the time, which meant Jake and Lily were forever trying to avoid having to look at kissing, but Uncle Eric went easy on him and kept it pretty short.

“Goodnight to my favorite small irresponsible child I have to take care of,” said Uncle Eric, leaning over to switch off the bedside lamp.  “And also Jake.”

The last thing Jake remembered, as he drifted off to sleep giggling, was Uncle Nate kicking Uncle Eric under the covers.

* * * * *

**LILITH**

Lily, three floors up, was very much not in bed, and neither were her aunts.

 _“Ge yun bleirona ogud,”_ Auntie O instructed her, pronouncing each word very carefully – it was a test, as well as an order.

“’Get your sword ready,’” Lily translated proudly, showing off a little.  Auntie O merely nodded, but she earned an amused wink from Auntie Niylah _.  “Ai, seda.”_  Auntie O could be silly when she wanted to be, but when they were practicing, Lily always called her “teacher” like Auntie Indra had taught her to.  And there was nothing the aunties took more seriously than teaching Lily how to use the wooden toy sword they had secretly given her last year for her fourth birthday.

The sword had belonged to an older boy, whose parents were friends with Auntie Indra, and when he’d grown too big for it she had traded him one of her best knives so she could give it to Lily for training.  Mom and Dad did not know about this.  The sword lived down here in Auntie Niylah’s room, which was the safest place to practice; Auntie O lived on one side of Mom and Dad, and Auntie Indra on the other, so up on the top floor a little girl with a big wooden sword might be spotted sneaking around.  This meant the uncles also didn’t know about Lily’s sword – Jake promised not to tattle, because Uncle Eric would just go tell Mom right away, and then Mom would say Lily was too small to be learning how to fight, even though Auntie Indra and Auntie Gaia both knew how to use a sword by Lily’s age and Auntie O was a really careful teacher.

Auntie Niylah’s bunk was a single one, not pushed together in a pair like the uncles had, which was a tight fit for two aunties and a little girl.  (“Well, there’s no help for it,” she had sighed dramatically when Lily arrived.  “We’re just going to have to snuggle.”)  She lay under the covers with her elbow propped up on the pillow, watching the two warriors battle it out in front of their audience.  

People lived all mixed together in the bunker now, and not everyone had stuck with the groups they’d moved in with, Dad had said.  Lily knew all about the thirteen clans – of which only twelve were left, because the Boat People were gone, though Auntie Niylah was full of stories about them – and how Mom and Dad’s people had come from space and the others had lived on the Earth.  Most of the uncles’ roommates, like Uncle T, were space people, but everyone who lived in here with Niylah had been Earth people.  And they were used to teaching kids how to fight with swords, so they were a very good audience.

 _“Gon em daun!”_ announced the big tattooed man with the beard in the top bunk (who Auntie O had appointed the referee because he had the best view), which Lily knew meant “Fight!”, so she squared her shoulders in a warrior’s stance and drew her wooden toy sword from its belt.

Auntie O was a lot bigger than Lily, but she fought fair, though without holding back.  She met every thrust of Lily’s sword with a parry of her own, firm enough to make the point but not hard enough to hurt.  Just showing her: when you do this, then they’ll know to do this, so your attack won’t get through.   Lily did try, sometimes, to be sneaky, and mix it up a little bit, and one time she had _almost_ gotten the drop on her, the blade of her sword just catching Auntie O’s knee before the taller woman whirled away.  Tonight she was sleepy, and distracted by birthday thoughts, so she didn’t manage to get a good jab in, but she did hold off Auntie O for a whole minute longer than last time before she ended up flat on her back, giggling, as Auntie O poked at Lily’s tummy with the tip of her sword to wild applause before helping her up.

 _Yu granplei laik mou beda, gongada,”_ said Auntie O approvingly, and Lily beamed.  _“Granplei”_ meant “training,” that was what Auntie O called it when they fought with wooden swords together, and _“gongada”_ was what the aunties called Lily sometimes.  It meant “warrior girl,” and just hearing it always made Lily stand up a little straighter and taller, as though being called that meant she really was.

Auntie Niylah didn’t like fighting, particularly, and she often seemed more on Mom and Dad’s side about whether this was a good idea.  But she never tattled, and she didn’t try to stop them, and she did let Lily keep the sword down here where her parents wouldn’t find it.  It lived in a box at the foot of Auntie Niylah’s bed, where she kept all her very specialest things – some of which, she had told Lily once, actually belonged to Lily’s big sister Clarke.  

Before Clarke went up to space with Uncle Bellamy and the others, she used to live on the ground, and she had shared Auntie Niylah’s bed before Auntie O did, so Auntie Niylah knew a lot about her.  Clarke had moved into the bunker with everyone else and thought she was going to live there too, so she’d brought all her things with her, and her special treasures lived with Auntie Niylah for safekeeping.  There was a watch that she’d gotten from her dad, Big Jake, and there was a picture Clarke had drawn of a really pretty girl with braids in her hair, who Auntie Niylah said was someone Clarke had loved very much.  (Clarke was _super_ good at drawing, Lily would never be that good at it, though maybe someday Jake would be; he drew all the time, their whole bedroom wall was papered in his artwork, pictures of things he’d imagined but never seen, like mountains and trees and the sky).  The girl with braids in her hair was named Lexa, Auntie Niylah had told Lily, and she had been a queen who used to live at the very top of a tall tower before a wall of fire came to sweep everything away, and now they all lived underground beneath where Lexa’s tower used to be.  All of this sounded like a made-up story from a book to Lily, until she one day she asked Dad about it; in response, he rolled up his sleeve to show her the mark on his arm that she and Jake liked to run their fingers over when they sat in his lap sometimes, and he told her that Lexa had put this mark on his arm so everyone would know they were friends, and that everything Niylah had told her was true.

This was the funny thing about Auntie Niylah’s stories.  They always sounded made-up, but they weren’t.  She was the opposite of Uncle Nate, whose stories always sounded believable and then turned out to be tricks.  He was forever making things up and telling them to the twins with his Serious Grownup Face so they would believe him, sending them scampering back to their parents demanding to know if they were true.  For several weeks he’d had them convinced them he was actually a hundred and twenty-nine years old and only _looked_ young, and once when he got sick he’d claimed he was allergic to children, until Mom informed them that he just had a cold and was being a baby about it.  But Auntie Niylah never told them anything that wasn’t true, even though half the time her stories sounded they couldn’t _possibly_ really have happened.  The things she’d seen and the places she'd been felt like legends to Jake and Lily, who only knew one thousand eleven hundred and ninety-eight people in the whole entire world.

Auntie O made Lily practice cleaning her sword – she was vigilant about this, insisting that Lily get in the habit for when she someday had a real one, which would require constant care – before putting it back in the treasure box.  Their room didn’t have metal wall dividers, like the uncles’ did; Niylah’s roommates didn’t care about privacy that much, so nobody minded Octavia changing into her nightclothes just right there in the middle of the room, something Uncle Eric wouldn’t do in a million billion years.   _“Hosh yu daun, yongon,”_ said Auntie Niylah, smiling, holding out her arms for Lily to hop up on the mattress, burrow into the furry blankets and snuggle up.  The uncles had two beds, because Uncle Eric had big long legs and Uncle Nate kicked in his sleep, but the aunties were little and they didn’t kick at all, so they could all three cuddle up onto one mattress, four strong arms wrapping Lily up in the middle so she felt warm and happy and safe.

“Big day tomorrow,” Auntie Niylah murmured, stroking Lily’s hair.  “Five years old.”

“Old enough to be a warrior,” Lily informed her, eyes drifting contentedly closed, as the aunties chuckled.

“Look what you’ve done,” sighed Auntie Niylah, a little bit like she was reproaching, but more like she thought the whole thing was pretty funny.  

“If I hadn’t, Indra would have.”

“Yes, but if Indra was training her, Kane would be too scared to say anything.  You could still get in big trouble.”

“Exactly.  That’s why we don’t tell Kane.”

“Kane’s _nothing._   Your brother will be back any day now, and when he realizes you’ve spent the past year teaching a child to fight –“

“Do you think it really might be soon?” Lily interrupted drowsily.  “Mom and Dad said five years from Praimfaya and it hasn’t been that yet, we still have six more weeks.”

“We can’t open the door until then,” agreed Auntie O.  “Just to be safe.  But when we first landed on earth, years ago, me and your sister and your Uncle Bellamy – “

“When the kids came.”

“Yeah, when the kids came.  We didn’t know until we got outside that it was going to be okay to breathe.  We didn’t know until we opened the door.”

“And you were the first person from space to set foot on the ground,” Lily mumbled in a sleepy voice.  She loved this story.

“Right,” said Auntie O, stroking her hair.  “The grownups thought it still might be years and years before it was safe to breathe, but their calculations were wrong.  So it might be that they’re wrong again.  Maybe it’s safe out there now, and Auntie Raven already figured it out, and any day now we could hear the sound of a rocket ship landing and they’ll come clear away the door so we can all go outside.”  She kissed the top of Lily’s head.  “So we can be free.”

“And I can meet Clarke,” Lily whispered happily, something like reverence in her voice.  The big sister she’d never met was already her hero.  Clarke could fight and lead armies and even heal people (not like Mom, but almost as good), and everyone said she was so smart and so strong and she could draw pictures that looked just like real life and she’d gone to space so that Dad could live, and she was everything Lily wanted to be when she grew up. 

Everyone in the bunker was waiting for the rocket to come back.  Everyone knew exactly how many days were left before the five years were up.  Everyone was waiting for the world to be safe so they could open the door and go back outside.  But Jake and Lily and Mom and Dad and Auntie O were waiting for different reasons, too. 

They were waiting for their family to be together again.

“ _Ai,_ _yongon_ ,” said Auntie Niylah, smiling.  “And you can meet Clarke.  Very soon.”  She kissed her forehead.  “Now go to sleep.”

* * * * *

**MARCUS AND ABBY  
**

By the time he finally stepped out of the shower and made his way to bed, Marcus was so exhausted that he could hardly think straight, his entire body one giant ache blurring together.  So he didn't realize just how badly he'd hurt his back until he lay down, cursing loudly and wincing with pain as he attempted to roll over onto his stomach to relieve the pressure on his spine.

Abby, putting away the dinner dishes, heard him from the other room and instantly materialized at his side, hands sternly on hips.  “I told you."

“I know,” he mumbled into the pillow, wincing both at the shooting pain in his back muscles and at the well-deserved lecture he was about to undergo.

“I said to you, I said, 'Marcus, let the Sangedakru boys do the heavy lifting, and you can just direct and tell them where to go.'”

“You were right, and I was wrong,” he conceded wearily.  “But at least it's done.”

Marcus and Abby’s birthday gift for the twins – which happened, rather neatly, to double as a gift to themselves – was a child-sized steel bunk bed with little storage shelves, designed to fit perfectly in the far corner of the living room, separated with the same metal half-wall panels the uncles had around their bunks downstairs.  When they were toddlers, putting both children in one cot next to their parents’ bed had made sense; they liked having the babies close to them, and the twins were small enough to share.  But they were five now, they were restless sleepers who snored and kicked and whispered and giggled and had long outgrown their cot, and quite frankly Marcus and Abby were ready to have their bedroom to themselves again.  So they had shipped the children off for their first sleepover, and Thelonious had rallied a few extra pairs of helping hands, but despite Abby’s protestations that they were both approaching fifty and needed to be careful of their backs, Marcus and Thelonious had insisted upon doing most of the work themselves.  They’d finished less than an hour ago, and were justifiably proud of the final product, but Thelonious had flinched when she hugged him goodbye and now Marcus was facedown in bed groaning in pain, and really, _when_ would they start listening to her?

She sighed and sat down on the mattress beside him, hands moving and down his spine, deft and professional.  “Dull pain or sharp pain?”

“Dull.”

“Show me where.  Here?’

“Little lower.”

“Here?”

“Ow!  Yes.”

She prodded expertly at the base of his spine for awhile, ignoring his sharp inhalations of pain, before she stood up and nodded with satisfaction.  “No real damage,” she pronounced finally.  “Just a strained muscle.  A massage will take care of it.”

“I’ll call Jackson in the morning for a physical therapy appointment,” he said, shifting his weight and attempting to find a comfortable position to sleep on his stomach.

“Like hell you will,” he heard her say, something mischievous in her voice, followed by the telltale sound of clothes hitting the floor.  “We have the room to ourselves for a whole night for the first time in _five years._   You’re going to need that back in working order.  I’ll take care of it for you.”

“Abby . . .”

“Hush,” she murmured, and he felt the mattress shift as she sank down beside him, and he swallowed hard as he realized she was completely naked.  “Close your eyes.”

And he was so tired, too tired to fight it even if he'd wanted to, so he did as she ordered, letting his body collapse completely against the mattress.  Soon he heard a faint plastic click and a soft liquid sound, followed by the warm scent of rosemary filling the dimly-lit room, which made him shiver.  He knew what this was.  Niylah, years ago, had gifted them a bottle of massage oil she’d bartered from the Trishanakru healer, for Marcus to massage Abby’s swollen pregnant belly and aching feet.  They’d hoarded it carefully – though the hydroponic farm downstairs did grow rosemary, there was never enough to spare for more than a few drops of extract at a time, so the bottle was nearly irreplaceable – and hadn’t used it in years. 

Marcus had never had it used on himself.

When Abby’s warm, slick hands met his skin, he inhaled deeply, swallowing down a low, deep moan of pleasure before suddenly remembering that he didn’t have to worry about that.  The children were gone, and Octavia – whose room shared the wall next door – was gone too.  They didn’t have to be quiet tonight, he realized, a thought which sent flickers of electricity running through his body and making his cock begin to swell where it pressed into the mattress.  He hadn’t heard Abby cry out when she came in so long . . .

“Abby,” he sighed contentedly, melting beneath her touch, body growing warm with anticipation and desire.

Abby smiled, working deftly at the sore spot just above the slope of his waist. Her hands slid up and down the ridges of his spine, fingertips pressing deeply into flesh, finding the knots of tension and kneading until they loosened.  It was impossible not to get turned on by the low, desperate groans of pain-pleasure, muffled by the pillows, which he emitted every time she hit a sore spot, but she soldiered on without letting herself get too distracted.  She did indulge herself by spending rather more time on his glutes than was strictly warranted – since it wasn’t exactly like he carried a lot of tension in his ass – but it was his back she was mostly worried about.  He’d been lifting sheet metal all day, and she hadn’t had him to herself for a full night since the babies were born, so by God, she was going to get him good and limbered up. 

Her deft, firm, rosemary-scented hands worked painstakingly down the back of his thighs, his powerfully muscled calves, and towards his strong, narrow feet, before signaling him to turn over so she could work on the other side.  He rolled over lazily, and smiled a little at her low intake of breath, realizing his cock was already half-hard.  But she took her sweet time about it, making her way with taunting, excruciating slowness back up his calves, knees, thighs, fingers digging deeply into the flat V of muscle over his pelvic bone, so near the aching swell but not touching it.

“Goddammit, woman,” he breathed raggedly, as her hands slid up and down his hips, pressing expertly into the joints and ligaments to soothe all the tension out of his bones, while pointedly ignoring the heavy weight swelling up just a few inches away. 

“Marcus, I am a _professional_ ,” she chided him primly, though he could hear the flicker of a suppressed laugh in her voice.  “Not now.”

“You’re evil, that’s what you are,” he grumbled as her hands slid upwards to knead at the muscles of his belly and chest.  He’d grown a little softer with age, and was sometimes shy about it, but he’d lost remarkably little of his powerful, taut build now that he was approaching fifty.  He was as solid and strong as ever, only not so sharp and hard as he’d once been.  Abby preferred him like this, the way she’d eventually come to prefer the beard.  Everything about this Marcus Kane was softer than the man he’d been on the Ark, from his jawline to his stomach to his brown eyes to the way her name sounded in his mouth.  It was a gift neither of them took for granted, to be desired so potently, still, with gray hair and aching backs and scars and a belly that had carried three children; it felt sometimes like a miracle, that the love between them only grew with each passing day, week, month, year, instead of fading.

Abby worked her way up his chest, thumbs sweeping his nipples and stirring a choked gasp out of him, which made her smile, and caused her to sink down against his body more closely than was strictly necessary, her bare breasts sliding up his torso as she went.  He swallowed hard at the feel of her nipples, aroused into sharp little peaks, the only exterior sign that she was already as hungry for him as he so evidently was for her.  She made her way up to his shoulders and arms, whose corded muscles were still powerful and solid even after years of underground living, before sliding her hands through his still thick and silky hair to caress the last traces of his headache away.  “Abby,” he whispered hoarsely, as she sank down further against him, fingers working the pulse points of his temples, tangling in his thick soft hair, thumbs sweeping across his cheekbones, her own hair brushing against his skin as she leaned in closer and closer . . .

“Please,” he murmured, breath coming low and rough, eyes dark and heavy-lidded with a particular combination of drowsy pleasure and hot urgency, and she smiled, knowing what it meant.

That was the way he looked at her when he was feeling soft, and relaxed, and at ease, and he wanted Abby to fuck him.

“Please,” he said again, so she kissed him.

The sheer ecstasy of not having to rush or keep quiet felt impossibly decadent.  When the twins were babies, they’d wait for them to fall asleep before pulling the covers over their heads to make love as quietly as possible to avoid waking them up.  And they’d developed a good system for sneaking breaks into the day, too, meeting up on lunch breaks or disappearing for half an hour in the middle of the afternoon.  But this, they missed.  They’d been lovers for such a brief time, comparatively, before children came into the picture, and long lazy nights in bed exploring each others’ bodies were a luxury they hadn’t had since Polis.  So for a long time, they just kissed each other, over and over, because they could.  Abby could feel heat and wetness begin to pool between her thighs as the cock beneath her grew harder against her hip, but she didn’t want to let go of this moment just yet, cupping his face between her hands, the soft roughness of beard beneath her fingertips, tasting the whiskey he’d shared with Thelonious and Indra when they’d toasted the completion of their project.  It was spicy and warm and heady and she licked hard into his mouth to draw out more of it, savoring the taste of him as he groaned beneath her.

“Abby,” he whispered when she pulled away, and moved to sit up, but she shook her head, mischief dancing in her eyes.

“No, you stay right where you are,” she ordered him, rising up to her knees and shifting her weight.  “I’m doing all the work tonight.”

When she gripped the headboard and lowered herself down onto his mouth, she felt him sigh with pleasure, inhaling deeply to take in her scent.  They hadn’t done this in awhile, and Marcus loved it as much as she did, nuzzling deeply into her warm cunt as lips and tongue and nose and beard began to send shivery-sweet waves of pleasure rippling through her body.  His hands gripped her thighs, holding her firmly in place, anchored to his mouth, so she risked letting go of the headboard with one hand and leaning back, reaching out behind her to take his cock in her hand.  It wasn’t a comfortable position, exactly, though her back was in better shape than his, but it was worth it for the way he gasped into her cunt with shocked pleasure as her fingers wrapped around his shaft and began to pump it up and down.  Instinctively, his hands tightened on her, sliding up from her thighs to her waist to hold her steady, muffled moans making her tremble with pleasure as she began to rock her hips slowly, riding him as he hungrily devoured her over and over.  His tongue parted her swollen labia and teased the wet, warm, aching entrance.  “Right there,” she whispered, “Right there, honey, just like that.”  Her fingers closed over the head of his cock, working it deftly, thumb swirling over the tip and pressing lightly against the sensitive slit, and she chuckled as his hips lifted almost reflexively off the mattress, followed by a muffled yelp of pain.  “I told you,” she chided him.  “Don’t move your back.”  But she slowed her strokes down anyway, fist gliding up and down the shaft, as he slid one hand down from her hip to her thigh to rub his thumb in deft little concentric circles over her clit, exactly the way she liked it.  She came hard, letting go of his cock to grip the headboard in both hands, fluttering little gasping cries escaping her as she rode the orgasm out and let it sweep over her, leaving her shivery and boneless and warm all over.

She crawled back down under the covers to lie on top of him, kissing his smiling, sticky mouth clean and running her fingers through his hair.  “How’s your back?”

“You’re making it rather difficult to hold perfectly still,” he informed her dryly. 

“Maybe if you’d listened to me nine hours ago and had let the boys do the heavy lifting, you wouldn’t _have_ to hold perfectly still.”

“How many time are you going to say I told you so?”

“Oh, a few more at least,” she retorted, laughing, as she reached down and took him in her hand once again, smiling fondly at his sharp inhale of breath.  “But I can put that on pause for a minute.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Nagging’s kind of a mood-killer, I’d imagine.”

Marcus looked up at her with heat swirling in his dark brown eyes that made her shiver.  “You don’t have mood-killers,” he said softly.  “You couldn’t make me stop wanting you even if you tried.”

She tightened her grip on his cock, pressing a soft kiss on his parted lips.  “That’s a pretty good line,” she allowed.  “I’m done mocking you now.”

“Thank you,” he said, then gasped sharply as her hips shifted and she guided his cock towards her entrance and lowered herself down to take him inside.

The first thrust was pure relief, as it always was, the simple bliss of being joined together again.  But they were used to rushing it, they were used to fast and hard and silent, and the luxury of time felt decadent.  Abby braced one hand on Kane’s hip, pressing him down, reminding him to hold still, as she slowly, slowly rose and fell above him, her other hand cradling his jaw, thumb stroking his bottom lip as she watched him melt back into the mattress, dazed with pleasure.

“I love you,” she whispered, and he answered by lifting his head to press a kiss against her fingertips.  “I love you.  I love you.”

“I love you,” he murmured in response, one heavy warm hand sliding down her back to rest against the smooth swell of her ass, stroking the skin, making her tremble.  “I can’t believe we have all night,” he went on, voice low with wonder.  “We haven’t had all night in so long.”

“We do have to sleep, at least a little,” she reminded him, and he grinned.

“A little,” he conceded.  “But I can think of several far more enjoyable uses of that time.”

They began slow, drawing it out, taking their time, Marcus fighting to hold still and keep his hips planted against the mattress, to protect his back, Abby moving slowly above him, letting the warm wetness of her cunt pull him in and out, in and out, in a lazy, unhurried flow, like waves breaking over the shore.  Low, rumbling moans and high, soft gasping sighs entwined together as they writhed beneath the covers, skin on skin.

But soon the slow, relaxed pace was no longer enough, for either of them, and Marcus reached up to take her hand in his.  “Abby,” he breathed, eyes dark with lust.  “Please.” 

So she began to move, picking up speed slowly at first, then faster and faster, her hips crashing into his, flesh smacking against flesh so loudly that Octavia would very probably have heard if she wasn’t downstairs with Niylah and Lily.  Kane groaned, a low deep animal sound, and his fingers on the soft round swell of her ass tightened.  “Harder,” he begged her, so she rose up onto her knees, straddling him carefully, gripping the edge of the steel headboard for balance, sending silent thanks for the hundredth time to whoever designed this bunker and bolted all the furniture to the floor.  They could go at it in this bed with the full force of their entire bodies and still, not a rattle or a creak or the faintest telltale thumping sound. 

“Your back,” she began, but he shook his head.

“S’okay,” he mumbled, breath tumbling out in heavy gasps, “just don’t stop.”

“You feel so good,” she panted, hips rocking against his, braced against the headboard, riding him as hard as she could, letting him sink in all the way, stretch her open, her breathy cries swelling up into something that was nearly a scream as she felt his hips buck and stutter beneath hers, heedless of the strain on his back muscles, as he came hard and deep inside her.  She followed close behind, shivering at the familiar, cherished feel of him filling her up over and over, at the shattered, vulnerable look on his face as he locked his eyes on hers while he came and came.

As the haze of orgasm lifted, leaving them both sleepy and sated, Abby sank down against him and pressed another kiss against his mouth.

“Just think,” she murmured, “we’ll never have children sleeping in the same room with us ever again.”

“Thank God,” he replied fervently, wrapping one arm around her back as she curled up into him and rested her head against his chest.  “Am I going to be stiff in the morning?”  Abby lifted her head, eyeing him critically, and he burst out laughing.  “My _back_ ,” he complained.  “I wasn’t being dirty.”

“Yes and yes, probably,” she said with a mischievous grin.  “Fortunately, the birthday party doesn’t start until noon.  Plenty of time to take care of both.”

“I should hurt my back more often,” he chuckled.  “I could get used to this.”

* * *

 

**DAY TWO THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SEVEN**

**(DAY ONE)**

_“I did hear you, you know.”_

* * * * *

She was asleep when it happened.

The peculiarly lucid dreams that had marked this pregnancy hadn’t left her, a curious lingering side effect of trauma and stress; though they were rarely frightening anymore, since even in sleep she was always aware of the comfort of Marcus’ arms around her.  But Marcus had taken the pre-dawn guard shift, and she was alone in the bed, which was what usually invited the recurring nightmare that had persisted intermittently for the past six years.  In the dream, Abby was running through the depths of the forest, searching for a lost Clarke, appearing and then disappearing in the labyrinth of mile-high trees, just a flash of blonde hair in the corner of Abby's eye.  Clarke's age varied in the dreams.  Sometimes she was the tall, serious young woman she’d been the last time Abby saw her, hair braided back by her mother's hands to fit beneath the helmet of her radiation suit.  Other times, Abby searched high and low without catching sight of her, chasing the shrill, squalling cry of a frightened infant calling out for her mother.

The dream was distressing, but it no longer surprised her, since its details rarely varied, like a familiar old enemy whose tactics you know as intimately as your own.  Her first reaction, upon finding herself back in the dream-woods, was always the same: _Oh.  Here we are again._

But today it was different.

Today the thing happening around her folded itself into the surreal landscape of her mind, reality merging with dream, and something happened which had never happened before.

The earth rocked violently, knocking Abby off-balance, forcing her to reach out and brace herself against a tree trunk.

There had never been an earthquake in the dream before.

Panic surged in her chest, which she pressed down forcibly before it choked her.  _No.  You know this place.  You're dreaming._ She gathered her bearings and kept running, following the sound of Clarke’s voice ringing through the trees, catching glimpses of her in the periphery of her vision – Clarke at age four, a tiny pale flash of white and gold lost among mile-high tree trunks that began to sway dangerously as the ground rumbled beneath them.

“Mom!” Abby heard the small voice rising in panic.  “Mom!  Mom!”

“I’m coming, Clarke!” she called back, fighting for balance as a monstrous evergreen behind her wobbled and then plummeted to the ground, missing her only by a matter of feet as it landed with a crash that shook the earth.

“Mom!”  Abby ran and ran, ground buckling under her feet, the thunderous rumbling drowning out every sound that was not Clarke’s voice.  “Mom!  Mom!”

A glint of white-blonde hair behind a tree, off to her left, there and then gone.  Abby whirled around and doubled back, calling out her name.  She was so close . . .

“Mom!  Mom, wake up!”

And suddenly the piercing, vivid clarity of the dream began to grow hazy, Clarke’s voice fading into a very different one, as bit by bit Abby began to return to the world.

No earthquake, then; just a pair of tiny hands on her shoulders, shaking her awake.  She opened her eyes, squinting against the light, to see Jake breathless and pink-cheeked with excitement.  “It’s happening, it’s happening!” he yelled, incandescent with wild animal joy, Lily beaming at his side.  “Clarke’s home, Clarke’s home, Clarke’s home!”

Abby rubbed her eyes in dazed bafflement.  “What . . .” she mumbled drowsily, shaking herself slightly as the fog of sleep fell away.  “Baby, what are you . . .”

“Mom, _listen!”_ Lily insisted, which was when Abby realized that she hadn’t dreamed the rumbling.

Only it wasn’t coming from below.

Abby froze, heart pounding; Jake and Lily’s eyes followed their mother’s as she lifted her head and stared up at the ceiling, where a heavy, dull mechanical roar could be heard, coming from seemingly everywhere at once.

“Clarke’s home, Clarke’s home!” Jake trilled in a gleeful singsong.  “Clarke came to get us!”

But Lily didn’t join in, eyeing her mother with concern.  Abby wasn't smiling, her brow furrowed with something that looked like it might be fear.  She sat up in the bed, pulling both the children to her in an almost too-tight embrace, pressing an anxious kiss on the top of both tiny heads, leaving them both in confusion; this was hardly the reaction they’d expected.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” asked Lily.

But her mother didn’t answer.  “Go downstairs to the uncles’ room,” she ordered them.  “ _Now._  Stay there until I come get you.”

“But we’re in our pajamas,” said Lily, looking doubtfully at her faded pink and green flowered nightdress and her brother’s too-big t-shirt.  Mom _never_ let them go out the front door dressed like this.

“There’s no time to change.”

“Mom –"

“Baby, I have to go find Dad.  Right now.  Go.  Find your uncles.   _Run."_

Jake and Lily didn’t know what was happening, but they knew not to argue with her when her voice sounded like that.  So they did what she said.  They held hands, and they ran.

A little less than five minutes later Abby, hastily dressed, opened the door to go find Marcus and nearly plowed into him headfirst, sprinting frantically down the hall to find _her._

“The kids?” he asked, breathless, without preamble.

“Jackson and Miller’s room.”

“Good,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down to the office.  “They’ll be safest on the bottom floor.  And Miller has a sidearm in his locker.”

“Where’s Octavia?”

“In the office.  Waiting for us.”

“Marcus . . .”

“I know,” he said grimly.  “I know.”

* * * * *

Jake scampered down the long winding ramp, his sister beside him, but stopped short when she tugged at his hand and turned left instead of continuing downward.

“The uncles don’t live on this floor, dummy.”

“I know.  But Auntie Niylah does.”

“Lily –"

“I have to get something,” she said evasively, ignoring the skeptical look on his face as she charged down the hallway, weaving through the mobs of people making their hasty way back to their bunk rooms as Uncle T’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker, saying something about a Code Red.

Auntie Niylah’s room, mercifully, was empty; she was usually at the farm in the mornings, and it seemed none of her roommates had returned from their posts yet either.  Lily made a beeline for the box at the foot of the bed and carefully extracted both her toy sword, and its little leather scabbard, which she buckled around her waist.  It looked a little dopey on top of her flowered nightgown, but she’d just have to make do.  She could fight in a dress if she had to.  Probably.

“What are you doing?” Jake demanded.  “How come you have your sword?  What’s a Code Red?  Why is Mom scared?  What’s the noise upstairs?  How come nobody’s excited about Clarke?”

“Because it's _not_ Clarke,” Lily told him, something grim and certain in her voice that shut him right up.

“They were supposed to be back a year ago.  A whole _year._  It has to be them.  You’ll see,” he said to his little sister with more optimism than he really felt.  “Promise, Lily.  It’s Clarke and Uncle Bellamy and Auntie Raven and they’re back from space and they’re gonna come move all the rocks and open the doors and everything’s gonna be okay.”

“Mom’s not stupid, Jake,” his sister retorted.  “She doesn’t think it’s them so I don’t think it’s them either.”

“Dad says nobody else up on Earth survived the fire, though,” Jake pointed out reasonably, “so then like who else could it _be_?”

“I don’t know,” said Lily firmly, making her way back out the door, “but I’m gonna find out.”

Jake trotted back down the long hallway at her heels, attempting to reason with her.  Lily’s recklessness was forever getting them both into trouble.  Besides, Mom wasn’t scared of anything or anyone, so if whatever was happening up above scared her, then it was probably something _worth_ being scared of, and Jake didn’t think climbing into the uncles’ top bunk and hiding under the covers sounded like such a bad idea.

Then again, he also didn’t want Lily to call him a chicken.

They reached the stairwell.  Down, to safety, and following the rules, or up, into danger and great big trouble?

“You can go to the uncles’ room, if you want to,” said Lily, turning up the ramp, “but I want to go help.”

“They’re not gonna let us help, we’re kids.”

“We’re not gonna _ask,_ dummy, we’re gonna _sneak_.”

“Lily!”

“Come or don’t come,” she said stubbornly, turning around to glare at him with her arms folded.  “But I’m going.  Everyone’s running back to their rooms, and then they’re gonna lock the big door with everybody on this side of it to keep them safe.  But if Auntie O goes outside the big door to see who’s there, then Dad’s gonna go along to protect her.  So I have to go protect Dad.”

“Then who’s gonna protect _you_?” Jake demanded.

Lily grinned at him, knowing she’d won.  “Guess that means you better come with me.”

He sighed.  “Guess it does.”

“Then come on,” she said, taking his hand as they ran up the ramp.  “We have to sneak up through the big door into the airlock before everybody gets there.  So we can hide, and be ready.”

“Are you scared?”

“No,” she lied.  “Warriors don’t get scared.”

“You’re not a warrior, you’re a kid.”

“I can be a kid warrior.”

“If we get caught, they’re gonna know about the sword,” he pointed out, which halted her momentarily.  She hadn’t considered this.  She’d never taken the sword out of Auntie Niylah’s room before, for just this reason.  If Mom or Dad saw it, they’d take it away forever.

But if she didn’t take the sword with her, and something happened to Dad . . .

“I don’t care,” she said finally.  “I’m still going.”

“Okay,” sighed Jake, as she tugged at his hand and they took off running again.  “Let’s go.”

* * * * *

“Oxygen and water are at critical levels,” Abby reminded them all, sliding the data pad across the table to Thelonious.  “The fact that we managed to last six full years in here with so few casualties is nothing short of a miracle.  So whoever’s up there, if they’re clearing off the rubble to open the hatch, they’re doing us a favor.  The farm’s thriving, the filtration system’s in working order, but we’re almost out of fuel.  And if we’re hearing what we all think we’re hearing –"

“Industrial machinery,” said Kane, and she nodded.

“Exactly.  At the very least, whoever is up there has supplies we need.  We’ll be able to breathe the air again.  And even if we can’t find fresh water, we can run the filtration system off whatever they’re running these machines with.  Whoever’s up there, they’re a damn miracle who showed up in the nick of time.”

Jaha shook his head.  “If Earth had other survivors,” he cautioned, “and they have chosen the Polis temple, of all places, to excavate beneath the wreckage, then it means they know we’re here.”  This silenced them all.  “It means they came expressly to open the bunker, knowing food and supplies would be found inside.  We have no idea who they are, how many, how heavily armed, but we can imagine they would be desperate, and our people could be in grave danger if we open that door.”

“Why the hell are you all so sure it’s not them?” demanded Octavia, arms folded, as she leaned against the desk.  “Isn’t that the most likely scenario?”

Abby reached out and put her hand on the girl’s arm.  “I want it to be them too, just as much as you do,” she reminded her gently.  “But Octavia, this is the sound of _massive_ excavation equipment.  That’s the wreckage of whole buildings being cleared away.  You love Raven, I love Raven, we all love Raven, but there’s no way on earth she managed to rig up a bulldozer out of whatever Ark spare parts she could carry back down in a two-seater rocket with eight people in it.”

“Maybe she made some new friends,” said Kane lightly, attempting a joke.

“Or maybe someone else with far more firepower than we have also survived Praimfaya,” Indra said darkly.  “Someone who was locked out, and has waited six years to exact their revenge.  I agree with Jaha.  These people are enemies until proven otherwise.”

“But we have the only key,” Kane pointed out.  “We weren’t able to open the door without it, so surely no one else can either."  He turned to Jaha.  "You told us the bunker was designed to be impregnable.”

“To natural disaster and building collapse,” Jaha amended.  “I doubt Bill Cadogan envisioned a wrecking ball punching a hole straight through it.”

“I'd imagine not," Abby agreed.  "What are the odds of a fleet of machines like that surviving _one_ Praimfaya, let alone two?  Where the hell can these people possibly have come from?"

“Okay,” said Octavia finally, deciding.  “We’ll seal the airlock.  Abby, stay here on the comm to operate the doors from this side.  Jaha, man the lock outside the door, and keep our people away from it.  Kane, Indra, you’re with me.  Bring guards and guns.”  She drew her sword from the scabbard on her belt.  “This is Day One,” she said firmly.  “Whoever we find on the other side of that door, we are getting our people out of this bunker today.”

"Project Exodus," Jaha murmured, causing Abby and Kane to look up at him, startled.  "The day our people return to Earth."

Indra followed Octavia out the door, signaling to the guards, as Jaha shouldered his own rifle and joined her.  Kane was the last to leave, lingering for a moment, unwilling to leave Abby just yet.

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, coming around the table to where he stood.

“I don’t like it when we’re on opposite sides of that door.”

“I don’t either,” she agreed, resting her cheek against the broad, strong planes of his chest as his arms came around her.  “But this time won’t be for long.”

“Abby –"

“Just be safe, and come back to me,” she whispered.  “I’ll be all right, as long as you come back to me.”

He bent his head to kiss her, cupping her cheeks in his big hands.  She felt the roughness of gun calluses against her skin.  He was strong.  He was a survivor.

He would come back to her.  He always did.

She let herself melt into him just for a moment, as his mouth moved against hers, and she marveled at how six years and two children had done nothing to dull or dampen the desire between them, how every time he kissed her goodbye it still felt like the first time.

“May we meet again,” he whispered, and she smiled, just like the first time.

“We will.”

Then he squeezed her hand once, picked up his rifle, and was gone.

* * * * *

They did not, as it turned out, have long to wait.

The squadron assembled in two neat semicircles around the metal staircase leading down from the hatch in the temple floor, guns raised.  The impossibly small entrance worked to their advantage; only one person could enter the hatch at a time, and any offensive party would find itself hopelessly bottlenecked, making them easy to pick off one by one.

Kane hoped.

The rumbling was loudest here, accompanied by deafening metallic shrieks and scraping sounds.  Octavia steeled herself and drew her sword, square at the base of the steps and flanked by guards on both sides.  Kane moved in towards her, almost reflexively, rifle resting on his shoulder, trying not to think about the last time he’d been in this room with her, trying not to think about the ash and bones in the temple overhead which he’d been dreading the sight of for six years.  (Kane had his own recurring nightmares too, held at bay when Abby’s heart beat against his in sleep but all too frequent when she took night shifts in surgery and he slept alone.  On those nights, he often willingly exchanged the calm peace of his empty bed for Lily’s tiny feet kicking at his knees and the sound of Jake’s snoring.  Their drowsy heads pillowed on his chest and the sweet herb soap scent of their damp hair kept the nightmares at bay without fail.  Marcus Kane had lived so much of his life without the simple comforts of human touch that he still soaked it up thirstily like a plant in dry soil, and Abby had often marveled at his ability to sleep peacefully in a truly astonishing number of uncomfortable-looking positions when he was tangled up in children.)

A piercing mechanical whine startled him out of his reverie and he gritted his teeth, cocked his rifle and steeled himself for what he fervently hoped would not be his last stand.  They watched and waited, waited and watched, as the sound grew louder and more piercing until a deafening crunch sounded above their heads and an absolutely monstrous spinning drill, edged in wickedly sharp blades, punched neatly into the corner of the metal ceiling, next to the hatch, prying the Second Dawn seal up as easily as opening a tin of soup.

 _Please be Clarke,_ he pleaded in his mind, though in his bones he already knew that it wasn’t.   _Please be Clarke.  Please be Clarke._

“Fire at my command,” Octavia murmured in a low voice, squaring her shoulders in her warrior’s stance, and every rifle swung steadily at a single fixed point, aimed at the circular hatch as they watched a bulky, dark shape – most emphatically _not_ Clarke – drop heavily through the opening and land on the staircase with a deafening clang of boots on metal.  The shape unfurled itself into a huge bearded man dressed in black with a crooked nose, shaggy red-brown hair, and a face none of them had seen before in their lives.

“Ready,” murmured Octavia.  “Aim.”  

Twelve rifles cocked with a cascade of tiny clicks as the big man on the stairs froze with his hand reaching for his back pocket, causing him to look up and finally take in the sight in front of him.

Then something remarkable happened.

He burst out laughing.

“Stand down, y’all, I ain’t armed, it’s just paper,” he said cheerfully, retrieving the item from his pocket and revealing it to be, in fact, what looked like a rolled-up note.  “No gun, I swear.  Ain’t nobody on my crew armed with anything more dangerous than – well, all right, I suppose Bessie here _looks_ dangerous” (here he gave an affectionate pat to the now motionless metal drill bit protruding out of the ceiling beside him) “but I promise she don’t bite.  We only brought her along because we figured if all the stories we’d heard about crazy Bill Cadogan were true, we’d never be able to pry open the bunker door without her.  Truth, now,” he told them earnestly, hands open, turning a full circle to show them the lack of firearms anywhere on his person.  “We’re here to let you out.  We came to help.”

Octavia looked him up and down, appraising, before giving a small nod, and the guns around her lowered.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Rufus Mendoza, Eligius Mining Company,” he said, descending another step or two and holding out the paper to her.  “I’m here with a message for someone named Octavia Blake.  Assumin’ that’s you.”  She nodded and sheathed her sword, taking the paper from his hands.  “Passenger vehicles were about two hours behind us,” he said as she opened it, as though assuming they’d all know what he was talking about, though nobody did.  “But the mining rig’s got better wheels for rough terrain so we made better time.  They’ll be here by sundown.  He said to tell you, ‘Time to come out from the floorboards.’  Said you’d know what that meant.”

Octavia froze.

“Who did?” she breathed, heart pounding, every nerve ending and bone and muscle in her body knowing what the answer must be but still needing to hear him say it, needing to know, needing to be sure.

“Oh, sorry,” he chuckled, “didn’t I say?  It was your brother.”

Kane’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.  His eyes were wide with astonishment, and the faint glimmer of tears, as he turned to look at the young woman standing next to him, the two of them sharing a private moment of some extraordinarily potent emotion.

“Bellamy’s coming home,” Octavia whispered under her breath, so softly they could hardly hear her, and Kane reached out to take her hand.

“Bellamy’s coming home,” he said back.

“So we good?” asked Rufus dryly.  “We all friends now?  Can I come in?”

“Yes,” said Octavia, recollecting herself.  “Of course.”

“Then you better tell your bodyguard to put her sword away,” he remarked dryly.  “She’s right terrifying.”

Kane looked around blankly, seeing only black uniforms and regulation rifles.  “What sword?”

“That one,” said Rufus, pointing, and every pair of eyes swung in the direction of the shadowy corner beside the airlock door where Lily, scabbard strapped over her flowered nightgown, stood in front of her brother in a perfect tiny imitation of her aunt’s warrior stance, eyes narrowed in fierce concentration, sword still drawn on the intruder.

“Lilith Vera Kane!” her father barked, voice white-hot with fury.  “What in the _hell_ are you doing here?”

“Uh-oh,” said Rufus sympathetically.  “Middle name, huh?  Sorry, kid.  This don’t look good.”

Octavia sighed, pressing the wall panel to signal to Abby to unlock the doors, and gave Jaha the nod to take the guards and their new guest back inside, while she and Indra remained behind to accept their inevitable scolding.

“Good luck,” she heard Rufus mutter to Lily as he passed her, and then in a few moments, the five of them were alone.

“We had a deal about that sword, kid,” said Octavia under her breath.  “Now we’re both busted.”

Kane swung around to glare from the shorter of his two recalcitrant warrior daughters to the slightly taller one.  “This was _your_ doing?”

“And mine,” said Indra evenly, stepping in to attempt to defuse Kane’s fury.  “The sword was a gift from me.”

“Which you never saw fit to mention,” he fired back, but Indra was unfazed, raising one eyebrow to stare him down.

“Semantics,” she said.  “It’s true that I never told you about the sword.  But it’s also true that you and Abby both knew all along that she had it.”

This was news to the children, who stared up at their father in blank astonishment.  It was also, apparently, news to Octavia.

“You _knew_?”

The corner of Kane’s mouth twitched in what might almost, _almost_ have been amusement.  “A ten-year-old boy came into Med Bay with a cut on his hand from playing with a knife far too professional for a kid that age,” he informed them.  “He lied about where he got it, but eventually he buckled under pressure and said he’d traded a toy sword to a woman from Trikru for it, and Abby put two and two together.  We were waiting to see how long the three of you would lie about this.”

“Four,” Jake muttered guiltily, scuffing his foot on the cold concrete, unwilling to let his sister take the brunt of this all on herself.

“Thank you,” said his father evenly.  “I appreciate you being honest.  Now you’re both in trouble.”

“I figured,” Jake responded in a gloomy voice.

“I just wanted to help,” Lily insisted.  “I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

Kane knelt down in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders.  “That’s not your job, my darling,” he said gently.  “I’m your father.  You don’t have to take care of me, or your mom.  We take care of you.    I’m supposed to keep _you_ safe."  He stroked her hair, reaching out to pull Jake in closer, looking from one to the other with big serious brown eyes.  "You both could have gotten really hurt today," he reminded them.  "I have a gun.  This room is full of guns.  We didn’t know who was coming through that door.  It could have been very dangerous.”

“But it wasn't,” she protested.  “He came to help, he came from Uncle Bellamy, he was nice!  Nothing bad happened!”

“She has the makings of a true warrior, Kane,” Indra said softly.  “You should be proud.”

“She’ll be better than me one day,” Octavia agreed.  “And you’re no slouch either, by the way,” she added, ruffling Jake’s hair.  “It took a lot of guts coming in here with no weapon.  With nothing to protect yourself.  You’re the bravest person in this room.”  Kane glared at her, and she cleared her throat awkwardly.  “I mean, this was a terrible idea and you’re in huge trouble, never do it again.”

“That’s better,” said Kane, ignoring the discreet wink that passed between Octavia and the children as he ushered them all out of the airlock.   They made their way down the ramp, and Octavia moved as though to follow Jaha, who they could see a few levels below taking their guest to get something to eat.  But Kane grabbed hold of her sleeve and stopped her at the office door.

“Not so fast,” he said firmly, planting a hand on her back and shoving her, very much against her will, into the office where Abby was still waiting.  “You have some explaining to do.”

* * * * *

Rufus had been telling the truth; the others arrived right on time.  He’d come to Polis with a small crew, only himself and four others to operate the three vehicles.  He told his story frankly and succinctly, a trustworthy narrator even of such an astonishing, unbelievable tale.  Eligius, they learned, had been quietly amassing a fortune in the days before the first apocalypse by funding long-distance space travel disguised as “research” but which was really a for-profit mining expedition to dig up an unfathomably priceless belt of rhodium deposits they’d located in an asteroid belt.  Inert, sturdy, and entirely resistant to corrosion, rhodium was the most valuable metal on earth, and unfathomably rare.  Anyone controlling a working rhodium mine was in possession of unimaginable wealth.  The problem, of course, was that the asteroid belt where their sensors had detected the rhodium was nearly fifty light-years away.  Forty-seven years there, forty-seven years back.  The journey was dangerous, the work backbreaking, and the return on investment a century away at best; hence the Eligius board of directors had approved the mission only under orders that they execute it on the cheap.  And of course, it was no easy feat to entice workers to sign up for a mission from which they would only return after everyone they loved on Earth was probably dead.  So instead, Eligius had partnered with a correctional facility housing violent criminals, and conscripted them into slave labor, with the promise of a pension and a full pardon once they returned.  Placed in cryosleep for space travel, they made it to the asteroid belt to serve out their ten-year sentence, digging out the mine and harvesting every last gram of rhodium to melt down into bars for ease of transport.  Then they'd returned to their cryosleep pods to make their way back home.  They'd left before Praimfaya hit, of course, and they'd lost contact with Earth as expected by about the third month, so they had no idea anything had happened.  They loaded up the rhodium, climbed into their pods, set a course for home, and returned on schedule.

Only there was no Earth to come back to.

The signal they'd been told to expect, coming from the Eligius Mining central docking bay in what had once been North Dakota, was silent; there was no signal coming from anywhere, except a massive ring hanging in the blackness of space in the orbit of a burned planet.

They’d awoken on the Ark.

Panic had ensued, on both sides, and nearly broken out into violence.  But Rufus Mendoza and Bellamy Blake sized each other up, each taking the other man’s measure, and finally decided to trust one another.  Rufus had the one thing Bellamy wanted most: a ship which could make it back to Earth, which the rocket could not.  He'd packed them all up to return home the moment they hit the five-year mark, but the rocket’s hull had begun to warp and crack just a few minutes outside the Ark.  They’d reversed course and hauled it back into the landing bay for repairs, and barely made it back inside alive before the hull breached altogether.  Raven had spent the past year desperately struggling to patch it up, to no avail.  

The miners, in contrast, had a ship built for a hundred, stocked with fuel, machinery, passengers trained for heavy labor, trillions of dollars’ worth of rhodium for which they now had no customers.

What they didn’t have, as it happened, was _food._

Cryosleep wasn’t just the only way to keep the workers alive (and prevent their aging) during their century-long round-trip sojourn; it was a corporate cost-saving measure, too.  Bodies in stasis didn’t need to be fed, didn’t need water, didn’t need medical care or hygienic supplies.  The miners had expected to wake up in a docking bay where hefty pensions and full legal pardons awaited them all.  Eligius had left them with no backup plan.  They'd run out of provisions, and were ravenous.  Riots had nearly broken out over the last protein bar.

The kids on the Ark, however, had algae supplements in proliferation.  And, crucially, they knew the location of a bunker with a working hydroponic farm.  They also had located an area, only a few days’ journey on foot from that very bunker, where green things were growing.  Raven had detected uncontaminated water, and a stretch of arable land suitable for farming.  It was big enough for twelve hundred, but it would hold the miners too.

A truce, then.  Ore and manpower and fuel and a working spacecraft to get to earth, in exchange for food and water and full participation in whatever civilization the remainder of humanity managed to cobble together.  And step one, Raven had informed all of them, would be digging out the remains of Polis to free the people inside the bunker.

Bellamy had wanted to go along, Rufus said – demanded it, in fact – but the mining vehicles couldn’t take passengers.  They weren’t even really “vehicles” so much as massive blades and shovels which happened to have tires and a seat.  But they'd been designed for the rocky mass of an asteroid surface, and they’d made better time than the truck, which they'd only used for transport between camp and the mines over level ground they’d already cleared.  So Bellamy had sent Rufus with a note for his sister, explaining the whole story and the deal they’d struck with the miners who now had no home to return to.

Rufus hadn’t read the note before he passed it to Octavia, which meant she was the only person who knew what it said.  All around her – in the office, in the hallways, on every floor of the bunker – word had spread that the door was opened, that their rescuers were not enemies but friends, and that the kids who had gone to space were alive and back on earth.  They were free.  They were alive.  The nightmare was finally over.  Giddy, ecstatic chaos began to bubble upward from the floor to floor, swirling around Octavia, who sat alone in the office encased in solemn stillness, staring down at the postscript of Bellamy’s letter, scrawled in her brother’s frantic handwriting, and felt her heart twist inside her chest as she read the words over and over and over.

_“Before anything else, I have to talk to Abby.  Alone.”_

* * * * *

This time, there were no guns.

When the handful of miners who had journeyed overland arrived in their vehicles, new friends from space in tow, they were not greeted by suspicious armed guards in the airlock, as their leader had been. It was only Octavia, with Kane and Abby beside her, who – after nearly ten straight minutes of pleading – had agreed to press pause on dealing with the whole sword thing and let the kids join them, so they could finally meet their sister.

It was chaos, but the good kind.  Bellamy descended the ladder first, feet hardly making it from the bottom rung to the concrete floor before his sister had flung herself into his arms.  “Sorry I’m late,” he murmured into her hair, arms wrapped around her like he never wanted to let go of her again.  The world stood still for a long time as a broken thing clicked back into place. 

The Blakes were together again.

When Octavia finally, reluctantly let him go, he crossed the small space towards Kane, hesitating awkwardly as he struggled to decide whether to embrace him or shake his hand.  But Kane took the decision away entirely, pulling the boy into his arms with tears in his eyes.  “Welcome home,” he said softly.

“It’s good to see you,” Bellamy said, voice cracking a little.

“It’s good to see you too,” Kane said back, stepping aside to let Abby take her turn to hug the boy and kiss his cheek.  

"Are you taller?" she asked him, tilting her head quizzically.  He laughed.

"I think I was done growing last time I saw you," he informed her.  "You must be imagining it."

"You look older."

"I _am_ older."

"You know what I mean."

"Abby," he said, the tone of his voice changing, "there's something -"

"Excuse me," came a small voice somewhere down near his feet, as a little hand tugged at the hem of his jacket.  Startled, Bellamy looked downwards to see the two tiny pajama-clad people staring up at him with wide, awestruck brown eyes.  The boy, who had spoken, tugged at his jacket again.  "I'm Jake and this is Lily and you're our Uncle Bellamy," he said. 

"I am?"

"Uh-huh."

Bellamy knelt down on the concrete, eye level with the children, and sat back on his heels, arms folded, staring them both down with a stern, unsmiling face.  "All right," he said.  "“Which one of you two was the baby that stole my spot in the bunker?”

Jake collapsed into hopeless giggles, burying his face in his sister’s shoulder.  “Me!” he said.  “I’m the oldest!  I was first!”

“You’re the big brother, huh?” said Bellamy seriously.  Jake nodded.  “That’s a lot of responsibility.”

"You may have arrived at a very opportune moment," said Abby, "since we're in the middle of the fallout from Lily charging headfirst into danger waving a sword, and Jake failing to stop her.  Maybe you two should have a talk.”

“I gave up on that a long time ago,” said Bellamy with an affectionate grin in Octavia's direction, “but if he figures it out, let me know.”

“I took Auntie Raven’s spot,” said Lily in a small voice.  “Is she gonna be mad?”

“Did someone say Auntie Raven?” said a bright, cheerful voice from the stairwell that made Abby's heart leap in her chest as the _ping! ping!_ of metal against metal rang above them and a lithe figure in a leg brace descended the metal steps, holding a large, clanking satchel behind her. 

Lily gasped and tugged at her brother’s hand.  “She’s _so pretty_."

“I like her leg thing,” said Jake, eyes wide. “It’s shiny.”

"Raven Reyes," said Abby, "don't you ever do that to me again."

"What, ditch you and go to space without you?  Deal."

"I meant, go up to space with brain damage and leave me for six years with no way to check on you."

"Harper turned out to be a pretty credible medic," said Raven.  "And I told you before we left.  My brain was fine."

"Still."

"It's okay to just admit you missed me, Doc," she said dryly, making her way over to hug Abby, tears glinting in her eyes despite the arch bravado of her tone.  Abby held her close for a long time, kissing her forehead.

"We all missed you, Raven," she said softly.  "You're a very hard person to live without."

"Sorry I took Monty and left you with just Jaha."

"I forgive you.  But don't let it happen again."

"Never," Raven promised, "you're stuck with me."  Then she bent down to appraise both the children, looking them up and down carefully. 

“I pick this one,” she said finally, tugging at Lily’s braid.  “I think she’s gonna be my favorite.”

“I’m sorry I took your bunker spot,” said Lily politely.  

Raven laughed.  “You didn’t take it, kid, I gave it to you."  Then she tugged off her satchel and setting it on the ground.  “Look.  I brought presents.”

"Are these presents . . ."  Kane paused, delicately, before proceeding.  ". . . age-appropriate?"  Raven raised an eyebrow.  "They're five," he reminded her, "so just make sure you're not giving them anything that, you know . . . "

"Goes boom?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Oh, Kane," she sighed.  "I would never give a five-year-old fireworks."

He exhaled in relief.  "Thank you."

"Not until they're at _least_ eight."

Jake and Lily collapsed on each other in hopeless giggle at the expression on their parents' faces and the broad, mischievous grin on Raven's.

"How come you brought presents?" Jake asked.  "It's not our birthday."

“Yeah, but I missed five of them.  And space was boring.  I had some time.”

Jake flung his arms around her good leg, snuggling into her thigh and reaching out to pet the metal of the brace on her other leg as she laughed and ruffled his hair.

The others descended shortly after.  The cohort of miners were greeted with warmth and directed towards the mess hall where a hot dinner awaited them, and where Rufus and Jaha were deep in conference and buried in maps.  They were followed by Echo kom Azgeda, who Octavia greeted with frosty politeness - she knew the Azgeda spy had made herself useful on the Ark and was one of them now, but she wasn't quite ready to like it - but she lit up at the sight of Monty, and looked six years younger as she flung her arms around him, the past falling away, and for a moment they looked no older than the kids they'd been when the dropship first landed.  Harper followed, Kane letting out a sigh of relief he hadn't even realized he was holding as he stepped forward to embrace the young woman he hadn't seen since he'd left her behind in Arkadia, shattered by the aftermath of the black rain and the cascade of losses that followed. 

Nobody spoke Jasper Jordan's name, but all of them knew he was there.

“All right, keep the public displays of affection to a minimum, guys,” drawled a sardonic voice from above as Kane kissed Harper's head and let her go, looking up to see a nimble figure hop through the hatch and down to the ground, skipping the bottom few steps and landing gracefully in front of the group.  He tossed a casual salute to Octavia, ignored Kane and Abby altogether, and stared down at the children with an expression of elaborate distaste.

“What the hell are you?” Murphy asked doubtfully, looking them up and down.  “Where’d you come from?”

Lily, seeing through him immediately, was undeterred, and launched herself at him with great excitement, flinging her arms around his right leg and snuggling up against his thigh.  “You’re my Uncle John!” she announced, as Jake joined her, hugging his left leg, effectively trapping him in place.

“Oh, I am, am I?”

“Uh-huh, you have to be, Mom said Uncle John was the one who always pretends to be mean but he’s really not.”

Murphy’s eyes lifted and met Abby’s, over the heads of the two tiny children wrapped around his waist.  “Mom said that, huh?”  She shrugged, smiling.

“Is it really true that you saved her life?” Lily demanded.

“Is it really true that you and Mom had to take a lady apart and squeeze her insides?”

“Is it really true that you and Uncle T saw a _sea monster_?”

“Is it really true that you steal stuff?”

“Not as much as he used to,” said a dry, amused voice from behind, and instantly the children’s attention was captivated as Emori descended the stairs.  Of all of them, she was the one who looked the most different to Kane and Abby’s eyes – headscarf gone, hair clean and sleek and cropped to just above her shoulders, her outfit a mix of Grounder and Ark clothing.  She didn’t move to greet or embrace anyone, though she exchanged a friendly nod with Abby, but the children immediately detached themselves from Murphy and scampered towards her.

“You’re Emori, you’re Emori!” chanted Jake in a gleeful singsong.  “We know who you are!”

“Yeah?” she said, eyebrows raised.  “What did they tell you about me?”

“Mom says you’re really smart and you know how to make things and find things and fix things,” said Lily.  “She said you were good at being sneaky and that you didn’t think people liked you even if they did and that she hoped up in space that you all made friends with each other.”

“Can I touch your hand?” Jake asked in wide-eyed wonder, eyes riveted on it.

“Fine.”

“Can I touch it too?”

Emori sighed and relented, but not without amusement, as the enthralled children swooned in wide-eyed delight at seeing something they'd never seen before.  This hand had gotten her cast out of her clan as a freak, but the children were enraptured by it, nuzzling their cheeks into the skin and examining the long fingers and counting how many times bigger it was than their own small hands, then giggling when she used it to swat them both on the head.

“You’re hired,” said Abby, amused.  “Niylah could use a break from babysitting duty.”

“No thanks,” said Murphy, “we don’t do the whole kid thing.”

“Too late,” Abby informed him, brooking no argument.  “They’ve been waiting their whole lives to meet the rest of their family.  You’re all stuck with them.”

The word "family" brought Bellamy back to the realization that he'd failed to perform his most important task yet, and his eyes followed Abby, impatient for a sight of the daughter who would be arriving any moment now, as she moved closer to the hatch.  Octavia caught his eye and watched him swallow hard, like he was steeling himself.

"Hey, I have an idea," Octavia said brightly.  "Jake and Lily, why don't you take all your aunties and uncles down to the mess hall where their friends are eating.  They're probably all hungry too.  You can show them the way."

"Aren't you guys coming?" Jake inquired, puzzled.

"In a minute," she said.  "Uncle Bellamy has to talk to your mom and dad for a second.  Scoot.  We'll be right behind you."

Jake looked at his aunt, confused, but it was Lily - watching a distraught Uncle Bellamy share a look with her father, whose eyes looked suddenly worried and sad - who put the pieces together first. 

“Hey,” she said, brow furrowed.  “Where’s Clarke?”

Abby froze.

"Hey, yeah, dinner sounds good," Raven said loudly, shoving the kids out the airlock door and dragging the others with her.  "Let's go eat and then I'll let you open your presents."

"But -"

"Now, kidlets," she said firmly, "the grownups have to talk for a minute.  Scoot scoot."

And without looking at Abby, she ushered the children and all the others out of the airlock, leaving it empty except for Abby, Kane and the Blakes.

It was quiet for a long time.  Abby and Bellamy looked at each other, both afraid to speak first, before she finally inhaled deeply and broke the silence.

“She didn’t make it, did she.”  But it wasn’t a question.

Bellamy's shoulders sagged as though a weight had landed on them, crumbling under the force of Abby's hollow brown stare.  “There was a radio tower . . ." he began helplessly, then trailed off.  "But we couldn’t adjust it remotely, she had to climb . . . there wasn’t time to – “  He stopped, collected himself.  “She stayed behind so we could live,” he said numbly, unable to look at her anymore.  “She saved all our lives.”

“So you could come save ours,” Kane murmured.  “She saved all of us.”

“I tried,” said Bellamy, desperation edging into his voice as Abby’s face remained blank and frozen.  “I promised you I’d keep her safe.  I promised you I’d never let anything happen to her.  If you can’t forgive me, I understand.  I just . . . I just wanted you to hear it from me.  I wanted you to know that I tried to keep my promise.  I’m sorry, Abby.  I’m so sorry.”

Abby didn’t speak.  Kane badly wanted to move towards her, for comfort, but something held him back.  The wall of grief surrounding her was immense.  This was her worst nightmare come to life – not just Clarke dead, but Clarke dead for _six years_ and Abby hadn’t known it.  Six years of believing her daughter was up on the Ark with her friends - imagining what her days were like, picturing what she was doing, hoping she was safe and happy.  After a year had passed with no word from the Ark, there were many in the bunker who'd come close to giving up, as resource levels dropped lower and lower; many who believed the kids could never have made it and were never coming back.  But Abby had never lost faith, not for a second.  Not in Clarke, not in Raven, not in Bellamy, not in any of them.  She'd believed.  All this time, she had kept the faith, waiting for her family to be together again, telling her children story after story about the sister they would someday get to meet.  All this time, the hope of Clarke's return was the fuel feeding the fire that kept her going on her darkest days.

But Clarke wasn't coming back.

Clarke had never made it to space.  Clarke's road had ended at the top of that radio tower.  Perhaps it had always been meant to end there, Kane thought, feeling his heart crack open, only none of them had known it.  Perhaps whatever force determined the trajectory of our lives had seen that wall of fire moving towards her over the horizon and had marked that spot the day Clarke Griffin was born, and in her final moments she had done the thing she had been put on earth to do - the thing she had always intended to do - by sacrificing herself so that everyone else could live.

_“I bear it so they don’t have to.”_

That’s what she’d said, before injecting herself with the Nightblood.  Jackson had told him.  Abby spoke of the island only rarely, the memories still raw and painful, so Kane didn't ask; but Jackson had wanted him to know, so Jackson had told him everything.

It would never be okay, he thought to himself, a heavy weight settling inside his chest, that Clarke was gone.  But this was who she was, and this was why he had loved her.  Why they all loved her.  Because she was her parents’ child – brave and fearless and strong and generous and willing to sacrifice whatever was needed so other people could live.  Kane had always understood Clarke in some ways better than her own mother could; Abby was too close, her whole self was shaped by the force of her love for her daughter, by the desire to keep Clarke safe.  If it was up to Abby, she would never have let Clarke stay behind to save the others.  But this, Kane understood all too well.  If it had been him at the base of the radio tower, and Abby in the rocket, he’d have done exactly the same thing.  He almost had, in fact, when the Ark crashed to Earth; he’d chosen to be the one who stayed behind, so his people could live.

He hoped it had been swift, and painless.  He hoped that in her final moments, she had known peace.  He hoped that Indra was right, about the thing she'd said to him so long ago as he'd walked up the stairs into the temple to die, when she'd told him she believed their people were united in the world after death just as they were united here.  Maybe she was with Lexa now, and her father and Wells and Jasper and Lincoln and Finn and all the other countless friends she'd lost.  Maybe Vera was there, holding Clarke in her arms and telling her she was safe now.

Maybe wherever she was, Clarke was all right now.

But her mother wasn't.

Minutes went by.  Abby didn’t speak.  She didn’t cry.  She didn’t move.  She seemed frozen to the spot.  It lasted a long time.  Finally Bellamy moved towards her, just a small step, reaching out his hand and tentatively touching her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again softly.  “You know how much she meant to me too.  I’m so sorry, Abby.  I just wanted you to know that I tried.”

Abby didn’t move or respond, but she also didn’t pull away as Bellamy drew closer.  Finally, hesitantly, he put his arms around her.  “I’m sorry,” he said again, face muffled in her hair.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

"Don't," said Abby roughly, shaking her head, and Bellamy, misunderstanding, looked stricken, as though he'd been slapped across the face.

"Abby, I -"

"Don't apologize," she told him in a raw, cracked voice, barely above a whisper, as though she could hardly form the words..  "Don't punish yourself for this.  You couldn't have stopped it."

"I should have -"

"You kept your promise," she said, pulling back to look up at him, weariness etched into every line of her face.  “She made her choice.  Just like her father.  They both made their choices.  I've been here before, Bellamy.  And I'm telling you, there was never anything you could have done to stop this."

“That doesn’t make it any easier.”

Abby gave a hollow, mirthless laugh, a sound of soul-deep recognition.  “Oh, honey," she said heavily.  "I know.”

Octavia, on the periphery, moved closer to Kane, and they watched in helpless, aching misery as Abby leaned her head on Bellamy's chest, letting him wrap his arms around her as though he were the parent and she was the child.  She suddenly looked very, very fragile and very, very small.  Bellamy held her as the last fragments of the wall around her began to crumble, and she finally, finally let go, burying her face in his shirt and weeping, heavy deep gulping sobs that echoed through the airlock.

 _This is the sound of a heart breaking,_ Kane thought as he watched her, powerless to stop it.

“I’m so sorry,” Bellamy murmured over and over.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of the 2017 Kabby Slackru "Big Bang," where artists were paired up with fic writers to illustrate their works. I was fortunate to get the amazing @fire-of-the-sun from Tumblr, whose work appears in Chapter 2. You can find the link to the original post here: http://fire-of-the-sun.tumblr.com/post/163102733855


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